Abstract：The natural element method is a novel numerical method based on voronoi diagram and delaunay triangulation of the scattered points in the problem domain, and its shape function is built upon the notion of the natural neighbor interpolation. Compared to the moving least square approximation which widely used in the meshless method, this interpolation method does not involve the complex matrix inversion, even without any artificial parameters and can greatly improve the computational efficiency. Further more, because of the shape function satisfies the property of delta function, the imposition of essential boundary condition is as accurate as finite element method, the treatment of discontinuous field function and its derivative are conveniently. This article applies natural element method to upper bound limit analyses, prepares the corresponding computational programs, several classic examples of limit analysis are adopted to verify the performance of these programs, the results show that utilizing natural element method to solve upper-bound limit analysis problems possess the advantage of high efficiency, good accuracy and fast convergence.
2012, Vol. 33 