In recent years meshless/meshfree methods have gained a considerable attention in engineering and applied mathematics. The variety of problems that are now being addressed by these techniques continues to expand and the quality of the results obtained demonstrates the effectiveness of many of the methods currently available. The book presents a significant sample of the state of the art in the field with methods that have reached a certain level of maturity while also addressing many open issues.

The book collects extended original contributions presented at the first ECCOMAS Conference on Meshless Methods held in 2005 in Lisbon. The list of contributors reveals a mix of highly distinguished authors as well as quite young but very active and promising researchers, thus giving the reader an interesting and updated view of different mesh reduction methods and its range of applications. The material presented is appropriate for researchers, engineers, physicists, applied mathematicians and graduate students interested in this active research area.

Collects state-of-the-art research on the subject of mesh reduction techniques Valuable reference for researchers interested in the field of mesh reduction techniques Aims at promoting the application of mesh reduction techniques to a wide variety of engineering and science problems Covers a variety of mesh reduction techniques -- one of the most active research areas in computational mechanics

Inhalt
A Global-Local Approach for the Construction of Enrichment Functions for the Generalized FEM and Its Application to Three-Dimensional Cracks.- Study of Some Optimal XFEM Type Methods.- Generalized Finite Element Method in Mixed Variational Formulation: A Study of Convergence and Solvability.- Stability in Lagrangian and Semi-Lagrangian Reproducing Kernel Discretizations Using Nodal Integration in Nonlinear Solid Mechanics.- Simulation of Forming Processes by the ?-Shapes-Based Natural Element Method.- New Advances in Meshless Methods: Coupling Natural Element and Moving Least Squares Techniques.- Eliminating Shear-Locking in Meshless Methods: A Critical Overview and a New Framework for Structural Theories.- FEM/SPH Coupling Technique for High Velocity Impact Simulations.- On the Construction of Mass Conservative and Meshless Adaptive Particle Advection Methods.- Spectral-Like Accuracy in Space of a Meshless Vortex Method.- A Hybrid Meshless/Spectral-Element Method for the Shallow Water Equations on the Sphere.- Iterated Approximate Moving Least Squares Approximation.- A Kansa Type Method Using Fundamental Solutions Applied to Elliptic PDEs.- From Global to Local Radial Basis Function Collocation Method for Transport Phenomena.- Computation of Static Deformations and Natural Frequencies of Shear Deformable Plates by an RBF-Pseudospectral Method with an Optimal Shape Parameter.