In this paper, and its companion Part 2 [Dong and Atluri (2013b)], the Symmetric Galerkin Boundary Element Method (SGBEM), and the SGBEMFEM alternating/coupling methods, are compared with the recently popularized Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM), for analyzing fracture and fatigue crack propagation in complex structural geometries. The historical development, and the theoretical/algorithmi...

OBJECTIVES This study assessed fatigue and its association with emotional labor and non-standard working hours among hotel workers. METHODS A structured self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 1,320 employees of five hotels located in Seoul. The questionnaire survey included questions concerning the participants' sociodemographics, health-related behaviors, job-related factors, emo...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate a multidimensional model testing disease activity, mood disturbance, and poor sleep quality as determinants of fatigue in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHOD The data of 106 participants were drawn from baseline of a randomized comparative efficacy trial of psychosocial interventions for RA. Sets of reliable and valid measures were used to represent model con...

Simplified fatigue and fracture mechanics based assessment methods are widely used by the industry to determine the structural integrity significance of postulated cracks, manufacturing flaws, service-induced cracking or suspected degradation of engineering components under normal and abnormal service loads. In many cases, welded joints are the regions most likely to contain original fabricatio...