Simple modifications for stabilization of the finite point method

A stabilized version of the finite point method (FPM) is presented. A source of instability due to the evaluation of the base function using a least square procedure is discussed. A suitable snapping is proposed and employed to eliminate the ill-conditioning effect due to directional arrangement of the points. A step by step algorithm is given for finding the local rotated axes and the dimensions of the cloud using local average spacing and inertia moments of the points distribution. It is shown that the conventional version of FPM may lead to wrong results when the proposed mapping algorithm is not used. It is shown that another source for instability and non-monotonic convergence rate in collocation methods lies in the treatment of Neumann boundary conditions. Unlike the conventional FPM, in this work the Neumann boundary conditions and the equilibrium equations appear simultaneously in a weight equation similar to that of weighted residual methods. The stabilization procedure may be considered as an interpretation of the finite calculus (FIC) method. The main difference between the two stabilization procedures lies in choosing the characteristic length in FIC and the weight of the boundary residual in the proposed method. The new approach also provides a unique definition for the sign of the stabilization terms. The reasons for using stabilization terms only at the boundaries is discussed and the two methods are compared. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the performance and convergence of the proposed methods. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons. Ltd.