Convergence analysis of the element-free Galerkin method for plate bending problem

In this work, we conduct the convergence analysis of element-free Galerkin method for the plate bending problem, where the boundary conditions are enforced by the penalty method. Precisely, the convergence rate depends on the nodal spacing, the number of monomial basis functions, the continuity of weight functions, and the penalty factors. Numerical experiments are conducted to verify the theoretical results and provide some guidance on how to select the factors for better numerical convergence.