A boundary element method for transient piezoelectric analysis

In this paper, a boundary element (BE) formulation is developed originally which treats three-dimensional problems of transient piezoelectricity. The approach at hand uses the fundamental solution of the static piezoelectric operator instead of the transient one. This results in a domain integral ap pearing in the representation formula, which contains the inertia term. Thi s domain integral can be transformed to the boundary using the dual recipro city method (DRM), which leads to a system of ordinary differential equatio ns in time domain, similar to the systems obtained in standard finite eleme nt methods (FEM). The DRM has been chosen because of the difficulties and b ig computational effort involved in a BE implementation, which makes use of the anisotropic transient piezoelectric fundamental solution. It is an app roach that appears to be much too time-consuming for use in a commercial BE code, in which computational costs is an important issue. The method prese nted in this paper is validated by a numerical example for transient piezoe lectricity, which demonstrates excellent agreement with FE computations for the generalized displacements, and an improved accuracy for the flux quant ities such as electric field and elastic stresses. (C) 2000 Elsevier Scienc e Ltd. All rights reserved.