An Element-Free Galerkin Scaled Boundary Method for Steady-State Heat Transfer Problems

Abstract

This article develops an element-free Galerkin scaled boundary method (EFG-SBM) for solving steady-state heat transfer problems. The SBM weakens the governing differential equations along the circumferential coordinate direction and solves analytically in the radial direction. Unlike the conventional scaled boundary finite-element method (SBFEM), an EFG approach is used in the circumferential direction in this article. The proposed method is verified via numerical examples including problems with thermal singularity and unbounded domain, and satisfactory results are obtained in comparison with analytical and SBFEM solutions.

Acknowledgments

The research leading to this article is supported by NSF [10421002, 10772035, 10721062, 11072043, 11202046], and NKBRSF [2005CB321704, 2010CB832703], the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2012M520617], and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [DUT11RC(3)33].