Mesh-free methods have significant potential for simulations in complex geometries, as the time consuming process of mesh-generation is avoided. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) is the most widely used mesh-free method, but suffers from a lack of consistency. High order, consistent, and local (using compact computational stencils) mesh-free methods are particularly desirable. Here we present a novel framework for generating local high order difference operators for arbitrary node distributions, referred to as the Local Anisotropic Basis Function Method (LABFM). Weights are constructed from linear sums of anisotropic basis functions (ABFs), chosen to ensure exact reproduction of polynomial fields up to a given order. The ABFs are based on a fundamental Radial Basis Function (RBF), and the choice of fundamental RBF has small effect on accuracy, but influences stability. LABFM is able to generate high order difference operators with compact computational stencils (4th order with 25 nodes, 8th order with 60 nodes in two dimensions). At domain boundaries (with incomplete support) LABFM automatically provides one-sided differences of the same order as the internal scheme, up to 4th order. We use the method to solve elliptic, parabolic and mixed hyperbolic-parabolic PDEs, showing up to 8th order convergence. The inclusion of hyperviscosity is straightforward, and can effectively provide stability when solving hyperbolic problems. LABFM is a promising new mesh-free method for the numerical solution of PDEs in complex geometries. The method is highly scalable, and for Eulerian schemes, the computational efficiency is competitive with RBF-FD for a given accuracy. A particularly attractive feature is that in the low order limit, LABFM collapses to SPH, and there is potential for Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian schemes with natural adaptivity of resolution and accuracy.
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