Numerical Analysis of Mindlin Shell by Meshless Local Petrov-Galerkin Method

The objectives of this study are to employ the meshless local Petrov-Galerkin method (MLPGM) to solve three-dimensional shell problems. The computational accuracy of MLPGM for shell problems is affected by many factors, including the dimension of compact support domain, the dimension of quadrture domain, the number of integral cells and the number of Gauss points. These factors’ sensitivity analysis is to adopt the Taguchi experimental design technology and point out the dimension of the quadrature domain with the largest influence on the computational accuracy of the present MLPGM for shells and give out the optimum combination of these factors. A few examples are given to verify the reliability and good convergence of MLPGM for shell problems compared to the theoretical or the finite element results.