In this article, the thin plate splines are given to obtain the numerical solution of nonlinear Fredholm integral equations of the second kind. The scheme approximates the solution using the discrete collocation method based on the shape functions of thin plate splines constructed on a set of scattered points. The thin plate splines can be seen as a type of the free shape parameter radial basis functions which are used to establish an effective technique for the interpolation of an unknown function. The numerical method developed in the current paper utilizes the non-uniform Gauss– Legendre quadrature rule to compute its integrals. Since the proposed scheme does not require any background mesh for approximations and numerical integrations, it is meshless. This approach can be easily implemented and its algorithm is simple and effective to solve nonlinear integral equations. Moreover the error estimate and the convergence rate of the method are presented. Finally, numerical examples are included to show the validity and efficiency of the new technique and confirm the theoretical error estimates.
