1 Manuscript submitted to Communications in Numerical Methods in Engineering July 2004 On the effects of nodal distributions for imposition of essential boundary conditions in the MLPG meshfree method Short title: Essential boundary conditions in the MLPG method C.E. Augarde * School of Engineering, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE UK Tel: + (0) 191 334 2504 Fax: +(0) 191 334 2390 Email: charles.augarde@dur.ac.uk A.J. Deeks School of Civil and Resource Engineering, University of Western Australia 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009 Australia deeks@civil.uwa.edu.au *Corresponding author Word count: <1400 Figures: 5 This work has been supported by the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) under grant ref GR/70722/01