BEM for theomoelasticity and elasticity with body force - a revisit

For thermoelasticity and elasticity with a body force, the regular boundary element method involves a domain integral. Special techniques have been de vised to eliminate the domain integral by either exact treatment, or approx imation using radial basis functions. This paper gives a unified presentati on of these techniques. Body forces of gravity, centrifugal, gradient, harm onic, and arbitrary types are investigated. In the approximation by radial basis function, existing work is extended to include higher order basis fun ctions of conical, spline, and polynomial types. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.