The elastoplastic analysis of a tunnel using the EFG method: A comparison of the EFGM with FEM and FDM

•We present the new application of the EFGM in the elastoplastic analysis of tunnels.•The results of the EFGM are compared with the results of the FEM and FDM.•An increase in the number of nodes leads to a decrease in the interpolation spectrum.•The results of the EFGM are in accordance with the results of the FEM and FDM.•EFGM is capable of analyzing problems associated with elastoplastic behavior. Application of numerical methods in the analysis of the elastoplastic behavior of tunnels has expanded widely during the last few decades. Element free Galerkin (EFG) is a meshless (or meshfree) method properly capable of analyzing the elastoplastic behavior of tunnels. Using node distribution instead of meshing is one of the advantages of this method. This advantage leads to stress uniformity between elements and no need for re-distribution of nodes in large deformations. The EFG method uses moving least squares (MLS) to obtain the approximation function. This paper deals with the development and application of the EFG method in the analysis of the elastoplastic behavior of a tunnel using the exponential weight function. Taking into account the elastoplastic analysis in a tunnel by using EFG method is a new topic which has been addressed in this paper. The results obtained from this method are also compared with the results of FEM and FDM, in order to evaluate the precision of EFG. In addition, the impact left by concentration of nodes using EFG is also discussed. The results of the EFG method not only stress the advantage of this method, but also are in accordance with the results of the FEM and FDM.