Bending analysis of composite plates using meshfree methods

In this study, bending problems of isotropic and layered orthotropic plates are presented using Element-Free Galerkin Method (EFGM). In the first section; the effects of selectable parameters of EFGM such as type of weight function, support domain size, number of Gauss integration point in a background cell, number of monomials and value of penalty coefficient are investigated on the solution accuracy of EFGM solutions and optimum values of them are determined for related examples of isotropic plates. In the second section; the reliability of EFGM solutions are examined by considering various number of layers, fiber orientation and thickness to span ratio for layered orthotropic plate bending problems. EFGM algorithms have been developed on MATLAB programming environment for both sections. Examples are solved by using developed algorithms and obtained results are compared with analytical results or reference study results in the literature. Keywords: Meshfree methods, Element-free Galerkin method, isotropic and layered orthotropic plate bending