Boundary Element Method for Elasticity Problems

Another general numerical method has recently emerged that provides good computational abilities and has some particular advantages when compared to FEM. The technique known as the boundary element method (BEM) has been widely used by computational mechanics investigators leading to the development of many private and commercial codes. Similar to the finite element method, BEM can analyze many different problems in engineering science including those in thermal sciences and fluid mechanics. Although the method is not limited to elastic stress analysis, our brief presentation will only discuss this particular case. Many texts have been written that provide additional details on this subject, see for example Banerjee and Butterfield (1981) and Brebbia and Dominguez (1992).