In this paper, it is shown that the symmetric Galerkin boundary element for
mulation cannot be used in its standard form for multiple connected bodies.
This is because the traction integral equation used for boundaries with Ne
uman boundary condition give non-unique solutions. While this fact is well
known from the classical theory of integral equations, the problem has not
been fully addressed in the literature related to symmetric Galerkin formul
ations. In this paper, the problem is reviewed and a general way to deal wi
th it is proposed. The details of the numerical implementation are discusse
d and an example is solved to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed
solution. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.