Meshfree methods particle methods and generalized finite element methods have witnessed
substantial development since the mid 1990s. The growing interest in these methods is due in
part to the fact that they are extremely flexible numerical tools and can be interpreted in a
number of ways. For instance meshfree methods can be viewed as a natural extension of
classical finite element and finite difference methods to scattered node configurations with no
fixed connectivity. Furthermore meshfree methods offer a number of advantageous features which
are especially attractive when dealing with multiscale phenomena: a priori knowledge about
particular local behavior of the solution can easily be introduced in the meshfree
approximation space and coarse-scale approximations can be seamlessly refined with fine-scale
information. This volume collects selected papers presented at the Seventh International
Workshop on Meshfree Methods held in Bonn Germany in September 2013. They address various
aspects of this highly dynamic research field and cover topics from applied mathematics
physics and engineering.
