THE MESHLESS SOLUTION FOR BENDING ANALYSIS OF FUNCTIONALLY GRADED BEAMS

This paper focuses on the bending analysis of functionally graded beams using a meshless global thin plate spline radial basis function collocation method. The shape parameter of the radial basis function plays an important role in the numerical accuracy. The determination of the shape parameter in the thin plate spline radial basis function is easier than that in other radial basis functions. The governing differential equations are derived based on the higher order shear deformation theory. The present results are compared with available published results which demonstrates the accuracy of the present method.