A meshless Galerkin method for Stokes problems using boundary integral equations

A meshless Galerkin scheme for the simulation of two-dimensional incompressible viscous fluid flows in primitive variables is described in this paper. This method combines a boundary integral formulation for the Stokes equation with the moving least-squares (MLS) approximations for construction of trial and test functions for Galerkin approximations. Unlike the domain-type method, this scheme requires only a nodal structure on the bounding surface of a body for approximation of boundary unknowns, thus it is especially suitable for the exterior problems. Compared to other meshless methods such as the boundary node method and the element free Galerkin method, in which the MLS is also introduced, boundary conditions do not present any difficulty in using this meshless method. The convergence and error estimates of this approach are presented. Numerical examples are also given to show the efficiency of the method. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.