Multiquadrics without the Shape Parameter for Solving Partial Differential Equations

In this article, we present multiquadric radial basis functions (RBFs), including multiquadric (MQ) and inverse multiquadric (IMQ) functions, without the shape parameter for solving partial differential equations using the fictitious source collocation scheme. Different from the conventional collocation method that assigns the RBF at each center point coinciding with an interior point, we separated the center points from the interior points, in which the center points were regarded as the fictitious sources collocated outside the domain. The interior, boundary, and source points were therefore collocated within, on, and outside the domain, respectively. Since the radial distance between the interior point and the source point was always greater than zero, the MQ and IMQ RBFs and their derivatives in the governing equation were smooth and globally infinitely differentiable. Accordingly, the shape parameter was no longer required in the MQ and IMQ RBFs. Numerical examples with the domain in symmetry and asymmetry are presented to verify the accuracy and robustness of the proposed method. The results demonstrated that the proposed method using MQ RBFs without the shape parameter acquires more accurate results than the conventional RBF collocation method with the optimum shape parameter. Additionally, it was found that the locations of the fictitious sources were not sensitive to the accuracy.