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.
