<p>In continuum-based particle methods, the adoption of polygon meshes for solid boundary modeling provides more efficient and smoother representation of complex-shaped solid boundaries. However, the computation of the particle-mesh distances might be an additional time-consuming task if naively performed. This additional computational time, in turn, may become a bottleneck for practical modeling of fluid–structure interaction (FSI) problems involving complex-shaped moving or deformable bodies. In the present work, we propose a technique named point-mesh search based on cell-linked list (PSCL), aiming to increase the computational efficiency of the particle-mesh search procedure. It is a variant of strategies that takes advantage of the cell-linked list structure to narrow the search domain. We investigated the behaviors of the particle-mesh searching techniques’ performances by considering FSI cases with violent free-surface deformations, such as relatively simple geometry dam breaking hitting a block for validation of the impact loads; water entry of a parabolic cylinder modeled as moving body or as fixed body with bottom inflow to assess the overhead due to moving meshes; and impact loads on freefall lifeboats to evaluate the computational efficiency in practical engineering applications. The results show that PSCL is robust and reliable and achieves significant speedups for real-world applications with complex-shaped moving bodies, demanding very low overhead for moving meshes.</p> Graphical Abstract <p></p>