Isfahan University of Technology Journal of Computational Methods in Engineering 2228-7698 44 1 2025 06 22 Meshless Local Exponential Basis Functions with Up-To-Desired Continuity Order for Bending of Laminated Composite Plates Meshless Local Exponential Basis Functions with Up-To-Desired Continuity Order for Bending of Laminated Composite Plates 43 61 3623 10.47176/jcme.44.1.1045 FA Alireza Motamedi Department of Civil Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 84156-83111, Iran Nima Noormohammadi Department of Civil Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 84156-83111, Iran Bijan Boroomand Department of Civil Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 84156-83111, Iran Journal Article 2025 02 13 This paper presents a meshless local method based on Trefftz formulation for bending analysis of laminated composite plates regardless of the lamination scheme. The plates are modelled based on Mindlin’s first order shear deformation theory. In the proposed method, the solution domain is discretized by two sets of point grids, namely the nodal grid that contain the degrees of freedom (DOFs), and the intermediate point grid that have no DOFs, but are only used for imposition of the governing equations and the boundary conditions. A subdomain, named cloud, is considered corresponding to every node, which contains a definite number of its adjacent nodes. The problem solution is constituted of homogeneous and particular parts within the cloud, where exponential basis functions are used to interpolate each part. The implemented formulation is capable of extending continuity of the DOFs up to desired order of derivatives, by only interpolating the intended DOF by means of its corresponding DOFs from the nodes in its close neighborhood within the cloud in a weighted residual approach, without introducing extra DOFs. The overlap of adjacent clouds integrates the solution function over the entire domain. To investigate the applicability and accuracy of the proposed method, numerical examples will compare the extracted solutions by their exact counterparts or available data in the literature, which reflect perfect performance of the method. This paper presents a meshless local method based on Trefftz formulation for bending analysis of laminated composite plates regardless of the lamination scheme. The plates are modelled based on Mindlin’s first order shear deformation theory. In the proposed method, the solution domain is discretized by two sets of point grids, namely the nodal grid that contain the degrees of freedom (DOFs), and the intermediate point grid that have no DOFs, but are only used for imposition of the governing equations and the boundary conditions. A subdomain, named cloud, is considered corresponding to every node, which contains a definite number of its adjacent nodes. The problem solution is constituted of homogeneous and particular parts within the cloud, where exponential basis functions are used to interpolate each part. The implemented formulation is capable of extending continuity of the DOFs up to desired order of derivatives, by only interpolating the intended DOF by means of its corresponding DOFs from the nodes in its close neighborhood within the cloud in a weighted residual approach, without introducing extra DOFs. The overlap of adjacent clouds integrates the solution function over the entire domain. To investigate the applicability and accuracy of the proposed method, numerical examples will compare the extracted solutions by their exact counterparts or available data in the literature, which reflect perfect performance of the method. https://jcme.iut.ac.ir/article_3623_ecdcd675b3a4cbb5578baf72f255ec21.pdf