A Meshfree Higher Order Mass Matrix Formulation for Structural Vibration Analysis

An accurate meshfree formulation with higher order mass matrix is proposed for the structural vibration analysis with particular reference to the 1D rod and 2D membrane problems. Unlike the finite element analysis with an explicit mass matrix, the mass matrix of Galerkin meshfree formulation usually does not have an explicit expression due to the rational nature of meshfree shape functions. In order to develop a meshfree higher order mass matrix, a frequency error measure is derived by using the entries of general symmetric stiffness and mass matrices. The frequency error is then expressed as a series expansion of the nodal distance, in which the coefficients of each term are related to the meshfree stiffness and mass matrices. It is theoretically proved that the constant coefficient in the frequency error vanishes identically provided with the linear completeness condition, which does not rely on any specific form of the shape functions. Furthermore, a meshfree higher order mass matrix is developed through a linear combination of the consistent and lumped mass matrices, in which the optimal mass combination coefficient is attained via eliminating the lower order error terms. In particular, the proposed higher order mass matrix with Galerkin meshfree formulation achieves a fourth-order accuracy when the moving least squares or reproducing kernel (RK) meshfree approximation with linear basis function is employed; nonetheless, the conventional meshfree method only gives a second-order accuracy for the frequency computation. In the multidimensional formulation, the optimal mass combination coefficient is a function of the wave propagation angle so that the proposed accurate meshfree method is applicable to the computation of frequencies associated with any wave propagation direction. The superconvergence of the proposed meshfree higher order mass matrix formulation is validated via numerical examples.