Simulation of Incompressible Flows with Coupled FEM/EFG shape functions

A method for the simulation of incompressible flows is described which is able to handle geometrically complex situations, such as those including moving and rotating objects in the flow field. In these situations, standard meshbased methods such as the finite element method (FEM) may fail if a suitable mesh can not be maintained at reasonable cost throughout the simulation. The proposed method introduces the desirable features of meshfree methods in parts of the domain where the mesh generates problems. This is realized by coupling FEM and element-free Galerkin (EFG) shape functions. (© 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)