TY  - EJOU
AU  - Cheng, Heng 
AU  - Yang, Yichen 
AU  - Cheng, Yumin 

TI  - Advances in the Improved Element-Free Galerkin Methods: A Comprehensive Review
T2  - Computer Modeling in Engineering \& Sciences

PY  - 2025
VL  - 145
IS  - 3
SN  - 1526-1506

AB  - The element-free Galerkin (EFG) method, which constructs shape functions via moving least squares (MLS) approximation, represents a fundamental and widely studied meshless method in numerical computation. Although it achieves high computational accuracy, the shape functions are more complex than those in the conventional finite element method (FEM), resulting in great computational requirements. Therefore, improving the computational efficiency of the EFG method represents an important research direction. This paper systematically reviews significant contributions from domestic and international scholars in advancing the EFG method. Including the improved element-free Galerkin (IEFG) method, various interpolating EFG methods, four distinct complex variable EFG methods, and a series of dimension splitting meshless methods. In the numerical examples, the effectiveness and efficiency of the three methods are validated by analyzing the solutions of the IEFG method for 3D steady-state anisotropic heat conduction, 3D elastoplasticity, and large deformation problems, as well as the performance of two-dimensional splitting meshless methods in solving the 3D Helmholtz equation.
KW  - Meshless method; improved element-free Galerkin method; singular weight function; nonsingular weight function; interpolating element-free Galerkin method; complex variable element-free Galerkin method; dimension splitting method; dimension splitting meshless method

DO  - 10.32604/cmes.2025.073178