A hybrid radial basis function-finite difference method for modelling two-dimensional thermo-elasto-plasticity, Part 1: Method formulation and testing

A hybrid version of the strong form meshless Radial Basis Function-Finite Difference (RBF-FD) method is introduced for solving thermo-mechanics. The thermal model is spatially discretised with RBF-FD, where trial functions are polyharmonic splines augmented with polynomials. For time discretisation, the explicit Euler method is employed. An extension of RBF-FD, the hybrid RBF-FD, is introduced for solving mechanical problems. The model is one-way coupled, where temperature affects displacements. The thermo-elastoplastic material response is considered where the stress field is generally non-smooth. The hybrid RBF-FD, where the finite difference method is used to discretise the divergence operator from the balance equation, is shown to be successful when dealing with such problems. The mechanical model is introduced in a plane strain and in a generalised plane strain (GPS) assumption. For the first time, this work presents a strong form RBF-FD for GPS problems subjected to integral form constraints. The proposed method is assessed regarding h-convergence and accuracy on the benchmark with heating an elastoplastic square. It is proven to be successful at solving one-way coupled thermo-elastoplastic problems. The proposed novel meshless approach is efficient, accurate, and robust. Its use in an industrial situation is provided in Part 2 of this paper.