Advances in the studies on meshless methods

Main procedures of meshless methods are reviewed and discussed. We described the approximation of meshless methods, the selection of weight function, the variational form and the discrete equation, and the numerical implementation. We also studied the discontinuous approximations and the approach of boundary conditions, and the coupling meshless methods to finite elements. Two examples of the EFG method are presented. Based on the investigation on the recent advances of the methods, the future development tendency of meshless methods is discussed and outlined.