COMPLETED DOUBLE-LAYER BOUNDARY-ELEMENT METHOD IN ELASTICITY

THIS PAPER reports an indirect boundary element method in elasticity t hat is most suitable to deal with particulate solids. The method invol ves a distribution of a double layer potential and, after a suitable c ompletion and deflation, is amenable to iterative solution techniques. It can therefore accommodate a large number of particles with complex geometries. Convergence of the method is significantly improved by th e introduction of a simple domain decomposition to solve the system of equations. The method is illustrated by the translating sphere proble m, the load transfer problem between two spheres at near contact, and the shear deformation of a cluster of 125 spheres initially in a simpl e cubic array.