MPM, as one of mesh-free methods, is developed at University of New Mexican and Sandia National Lab for complex physical problems such as impact/contact, penetration, perforation, crack propagation, interactions among different material phases, history dependent material variables, etc. The method takes advantages of both the Eulerian and Lagrangian schemes to avoid the shortcomings of each ( mesh lockup, tangling and extra interpolations for history dependent materials) The comprehensive review of MPM can be found in Sand Report SAND2002-0482 “An Evaluation of the Material Point Method” by Zhen Chen and Rebecca Brannon.

Material Point Method