A gradient-based adaptation procedure and its implementation in the element-free Galerkin method

A gradient-based adaptation procedure is proposed in this paper. The relative error in the total strain energy from two adjacent adaptation stages is used as a stop-criterion. The re nement–coarsening process is guided by the gradient of strain energy density, based on the assumption: a larger gradient needs a richer mesh and vice versa. The procedure is then implemented in the element-free Galerkin method for linear elasto-static problems. Numerical examples are presented to show the performance of the proposed procedure