The Boundary Contour Method for Magneto-Electro-Elastic Media with Linear Boundary Elements

This paper presents a development of the boundary contour method (BCM) for magneto-electro-elastic media. Firstly, the divergence-free of the integrand of the magneto- electro-elastic boundary element is proved. Secondly, the boundary contour method formulations are obtained by introducing linear shape functions and Green's functions (Computers & Structures, 82(2004):1599-1607) for magneto-electro-elastic media and using the rigid body motion solution to regularize the BCM and avoid computation of the corner tensor. The BCM is applied to the problem of magneto-electro-elastic media. Finally, numerical solutions for illustrative examples are compared with exact ones and those of the conventional boundary element method (BEM). The numerical results of the BCM coincide very well with the exact solution, and the feasibility and efficiency of the method are verified.     

The Boundary Contour Method for Piezoelectric Media with Quadratic Boundary Elements

This paper presents a development of the boundary contour method (BCM) for piezoelectric media. Firstly, the divergence-free of the integrand of the piezoelectric boundary element method is proved. Secondly, the boundary contour method formulations are obtained by introducing quadratic shape functions and Green's functions (Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering1998;158: 65-80) for piezoelectric media and using the rigid body motion solution to regularize the BCM and avoid computation of the corner tensor. The BCM is applied to the problem of piezoelectric media. Finally, numerical solutions for illustrative examples are compared with exact ones. The numerical results of the BCM coincide very well with the exact solution, and the feasibility and efficiency of the method are verified.     

The hypersingular boundary contour method for two-dimensional linear elasticity

Summary This paper presents a novel method called the Hypersingular Boundary Contour Method (HBCM) for two-dimensional (2-D) linear elastostatics. This new method can be considered to be a variant of the standard Boundary Element Method (BEM) and the Boundary Contour Method (BCM) because: (a) a regularized form of the hypersingular boundary integral equation (HBIE) is employed as the starting point, and (b) the above regularized form is then converted to a boundary contour version based on the divergence free property of its integrand. Therefore, as in the 2-D BCM, numerical integrations are totally eliminated in the 2-D HBCM. Furthermore, the regularized HBIE can be collocated at any boundary point on a body where stresses are physically continuous. A full theoretical development for this new method is addressed in the present work. Selected examples are also included and the numerical results obtained are uniformly accurate.     

The boundary contour method for piezoelectric media with linear boundary elements

This paper presents a development of the boundary contour method (BCM) for piezoelectric media. First, the divergence‐free property of the integrand of the piezoelectric boundary element is proved. Secondly, the boundary contour method formulation is derived and potential functions are obtained by introducing linear shape functions and Green's functions (Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering 1998; 158 : 65) for piezoelectric media. The BCM is applied to the problem of piezoelectric media. Finally, numerical solutions for illustrative examples are compared with exact ones and those of the conventional boundary element method (BEM). The numerical results of the BCM coincide very well with the exact solution, and the feasibility and efficiency of the method are verified. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stresses,stress sensitivities and shape optimization in two-dimensional linear elasticity by the Boundary Contour Method

This paper presents new formulations for computing stresses as well as their sensitivities in two-dimensional (2-D) linear elasticity by the Boundary Contour Method (BCM). Contrary to previous work (e.g. Reference 1), the formulations presented here are established directly from the boundary contour version of the Hypersingular Boundary Integral Equation (HBIE) which can provide accurate numerical results and is very efficient with regard to numerical implementation as well as computational time. The Design Sensitivity Coefficients (DSCs) computed from the above formulations are then coupled with a mathematical programming method, here the Successive Quadratic Programming (SQP) algorithm, in order to solve shape optimization problems. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the validity of the new formulations for calculation of DSCs. Also, based on these formulations, shape optimization examples by the BCM are presented here for the first time. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Shape optimization in three-dimensional linear elasticity by the boundary contour method

A variant of the usual boundary element method (BEM), called the boundary contour method (BCM), has been presented in the literature in recent years. In the BCM in three dimensions, surface integrals on boundary elements of the usual BEM are transformed, through an application of Stokes’ theorem, into line integrals on the bounding contours of these elements. The BCM employs global shape functions with the weights, in the linear combinations of these shape functions, being defined piecewise on boundary elements. A very useful consequence of this approach is that stresses, at suitable points on the boundary of a body, can be easily obtained from a post-processing step of the standard BCM. The subject of this paper is shape optimization in three-dimensional (3D) linear elasticity by the BCM. This is achieved by coupling a 3D BCM code with a mathematical programming code based on the successive quadratic programming (SQP) algorithm. Numerical results are presented for several interesting illustrative examples.     

The boundary element method for the solution of Stokes equations in two-dimensional domains

A boundary element method for the solution of Stokes equations governing creeping flow or Stokes flow in the interior of an arbitrary two-dimensional domain is presented. A procedure for introducing pressure data on the boundary of the domain is also included and the integral coefficients of the resulting linear algebraic equations are evaluated analytically. Calculations are performed in a circular domain using a variety of different boundary conditions, including a combination of the fluid velocity and the pressure. Results are presented both on the boundary and inside the solution domain in order to illustrate that the boundary element method developed here provides an efficient technique, in terms of accuracy and convergence, to investigate Stokes flow numerically.     

Boundary element method based on a new second kind integral equation formulation

A boundary integral equation (BIE) formulation for elasticity problems with mixed boundary conditions, proposed by Parton and Perlin (Mathematical Methods of the Theory of Elasticity, Mir, Moscow, 1984), is implemented in this paper using quadratic boundary elements. The formulation is specialised to Stokes flow problems by setting the Poisson ratio to 0·5 in the relevant kernels. The implementation is used to analyse non-trivial three dimensional problems in elasticity and Stokes flows. The results compare well with those obtained by a direct boundary element method. An outline of the extension of the formulation to non-linear problems is also given.     

Boundary element solution of thermal creep flow in microfluidic devices

Flow in rarefied gases can be caused by a tangential temperature gradient along the contour boundaries (tangential heat flux), without the presence of any other external driven force, inducing a fluid motion from colder to hotter regions. This phenomenon is known as thermal creep and has gained importance in recent years in connection with micro-scale gas flow systems. Prediction of the flow field in micro-systems can be obtained by using continuum based models under appropriate boundary conditions accounting for the slip velocity due to tangential shear rate and heat flux. In this work a boundary integral equation formulation for Stokes slip flow, based on the normal and tangential projection of the Green's integral representational formulae for the velocity field is presented. The tangential heat flux is evaluated in terms of the tangential gradient of the temperature integral representational formulae presenting singularities of the Cauchy type, which are removed by the use of an auxiliary potential field. These formulations are used to evaluate the performance of different microfluidic devices.     

A Galerkin boundary contour method for two-dimensional linear elasticity

The Boundary Contour Method (BCM) is a recent variant of the Boundary Element Method (BEM) resting on the use of boundary approximations which a-priori satisfy the field equations. For two-dimensional problems, the evaluation of all the line-integrals involved in the collocation BCM reduces to function evaluations at the end-points of each element, thus completely avoiding numerical integrations. With reference to 2-D linear elasticity, this paper develops a variational version of BCM by transferring to the BCM context the ingredients which characterize the Galerkin-Symmetric BEM (GSBEM). The method proposed herein requires no numerical integrations: all the needed double line-integrals over boundary elements pairs can be evaluated by generating appropriate “potential functions” (in closed form) and computing their values at the element end-points. This holds for straight as well as curved elements; however the coefficient matrix of the equation system in the boundary unknowns turns out to be fully symmetric only when all the elements are straight. The numerical results obtained for some benchmark problems, for which analytical solutions are available, validate the proposed formulation and the corresponding solution procedure.     

The traction boundary contour method for linear elasticity

This paper presents a further development of the boundary contour method. The boundary contour method is extended to cover the traction boundary integral equation. A traction boundary contour method is proposed for linear elastostatics. The formulation of traction boundary contour method is regular for points except the ends of the boundary element and corners. The present approach only requires line integrals for three‐dimensional problems and function evaluations at the ends of boundary elements for two‐dimensional cases. The implementation of the traction boundary contour method with quadratic boundary elements is presented for two‐dimensional problems. Numerical results are given for some two‐dimensional examples, and these are compared with analytical solutions. This method is shown to give excellent results for illustrative examples. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A fast boundary cloud method for 3D exterior electrostatic analysis

An accelerated boundary cloud method (BCM) for boundary‐only analysis of 3D electrostatic problems is presented here. BCM uses scattered points unlike the classical boundary element method (BEM) which uses boundary elements to discretize the surface of the conductors. BCM combines the weighted least‐squares approach for the construction of approximation functions with a boundary integral formulation for the governing equations. A linear base interpolating polynomial that can vary from cloud to cloud is employed. The boundary integrals are computed by using a cell structure and different schemes have been used to evaluate the weakly singular and non‐singular integrals. A singular value decomposition (SVD) based acceleration technique is employed to solve the dense linear system of equations arising in BCM. The performance of BCM is compared with BEM for several 3D examples. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An adaptive fast multipole boundary element method for three-dimensional acoustic wave problems based on the Burton–Miller formulation

The high solution costs and non-uniqueness difficulties in the boundary element method (BEM) based on the conventional boundary integral equation (CBIE) formulation are two main weaknesses in the BEM for solving exterior acoustic wave problems. To tackle these two weaknesses, an adaptive fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) based on the Burton–Miller formulation for 3-D acoustics is presented in this paper. In this adaptive FMBEM, the Burton–Miller formulation using a linear combination of the CBIE and hypersingular BIE (HBIE) is applied to overcome the non-uniqueness difficulties. The iterative solver generalized minimal residual (GMRES) and fast multipole method (FMM) are adopted to improve the overall computational efficiency. This adaptive FMBEM for acoustics is an extension of the adaptive FMBEM for 3-D potential problems developed by the authors recently. Several examples on large-scale acoustic radiation and scattering problems are presented in this paper which show that the developed adaptive FMBEM can be several times faster than the non-adaptive FMBEM while maintaining the accuracies of the BEM.     

A fast boundary cloud method for exterior 2D electrostatic analysis

An accelerated boundary cloud method (BCM) for boundary‐only analysis of exterior electrostatic problems is presented in this paper. The BCM uses scattered points instead of the classical boundary elements to discretize the surface of the conductors. The dense linear system of equations generated by the BCM are solved by a GMRES iterative solver combined with a singular value decomposition based rapid matrix–vector multiplication technique. The accelerated technique takes advantage of the fact that the integral equation kernel (2D Green's function in our case) is locally smooth and, therefore, can be dramatically compressed by using a singular value decomposition technique. The acceleration technique greatly speeds up the solution phase of the linear system by accelerating the computation of the dense matrix–vector product and reducing the storage required by the BCM. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Co-located pressure-correction formulations on unstructured 2-D grids

 By extending a Navier–Stokes solution method for structured grids (SGs), a pressure-correction, finite-volume formulation for the numerical solution of laminar, incompressible, 2-D flows on unstructured grids (UGs) with triangular elements has been deviced. Since a co-located storage arrangement for all of the flow variables is used, the velocity and pressure fields should be artificially coupled. This is achieved through the careful extension of the Pressure-Weighted Interpolation Method (PWIM), successfully used for SGs in the past. In the first part of the paper, the method formulation for UGs is analyzed. Then, the PWIM for UGs and the boundary conditions' implementation along solid walls are investigated, on the basis of two flow problems.     

A BEM for the prediction of free surface effects on cavitating hydrofoils

 In this paper, a boundary element method (BEM) for cavitating hydrofoils moving steadily under a free surface is presented and its performance is assessed through systematic convergence studies, comparisons with other methods, and existing measurements. The cavitating hydrofoil part and the free surface part of the problem are solved separately, with the effects of one on the other being accounted for in an iterative manner. Both the cavitating hydrofoil surface and the free surface are modeled by a low-order potential based panel method using constant strength dipole and source panels. The induced potential by the cavitating hydrofoil on the free surface and by the free surface on the hydrofoil are determined in an iterative sense and considered on the right hand side of the discretized integral equations. The source strengths on the free surface are expressed by applying the linearized free surface conditions. In order to prevent upstream waves the source strengths from some distance in front of the hydrofoil to the end of the truncated upstream boundary are enforced to be equal to zero. No radiation condition is enforced at the downstream boundary or at the transverse boundary for the three-dimensional case. First, the BEM is validated in the case of a point vortex and some convergence studies are done. Second, the BEM is applied to 2-D hydrofoil geometry both in fully wetted and in cavitating flow conditions and the predictions are compared to those of other methods and of the measurements in the literature. The effects of Froude number, the cavitation number and the submergence depth of the hydrofoil from free surface are discussed. Then, the BEM is validated in the case of a 3-D point source. The effects of grid and of the truncated domain size on the results are investigated. Lastly, the BEM is applied to a 3-D rectangular cavitating hydrofoil and the effect of number of iterations and the effect of Froude number on the results are discussed. Received 6 November 2000     

A Trefftz function approximation in local boundary integral equations

 In the present paper the Trefftz function as a test function is used to derive the local boundary integral equations (LBIE) for linear elasticity. Since Trefftz functions are regular, much less requirements are put on numerical integration than in the conventional boundary integral method. The moving least square (MLS) approximation is applied to the displacement field. Then, the traction vectors on the local boundaries are obtained from the gradients of the approximated displacements by using Hooke's law. Nodal points are randomly spread on the domain of the analysed body. The present method is a truly meshless method, as it does not need a finite element mesh, either for purposes of interpolation of the solution variables, or for the integration of the energy. Two ways are presented to formulate the solution of boundary value problems. In the first one the local boundary integral equations are written in all nodes (interior and boundary nodes). In the second way the LBIE are written only at the interior nodes and at the nodes on the global boundary the prescribed values of displacements and/or tractions are identified with their MLS approximations. Numerical examples for a square patch test and a cantilever beam are presented to illustrate the implementation and performance of the present method. Received 6 November 2000     

Meshless analysis of two-dimensional Stokes flows with the Galerkin boundary node method

In this paper, the Galerkin boundary node method (GBNM) is developed for the solution of stationary Stokes problems in two dimensions. The GBNM is a boundary only meshless method that combines a variational form of boundary integral formulations for governing equations with the moving least-squares (MLS) approximations for construction of the trial and test functions. Boundary conditions in this approach are included into the variational form, thus they can be applied directly and easily despite the MLS shape functions lack the property of a delta function. Besides, the GBNM keeps the symmetry and positive definiteness of the variational problems. Convergence analysis results of both the velocity and the pressure are given. Some selected numerical tests are also presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the method.     

Wavelet BEM for large‐scale Stokes flows based on the direct integral formulation

This paper describes a new wavelet boundary element method (WBEM) for large‐scale simulations of three‐dimensional Stokes problems. It is based on a Galerkin formulation and uses only one set of wavelet basis. A method for the efficient discretization and compression of the double‐layer integral operator of Stokes equation is proposed. In addition, a compression strategy for further reducing the setting‐up time for the sparse system matrix is also developed. With these new developments, the method has demonstrated a high matrix compression rate for problems with complicated geometries. Applications of the method are illustrated through several examples concerning the modeling of damping forces acting on MEMS resonators including a cantilever resonator oscillating in an unbounded air and a perforated plate resonator oscillating next to a fixed substrate. The numerical results clearly illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the developed WBEM in these large‐scale Stokes flow simulations. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Adaptive Fast Multipole Boundary Element Method for Three-dimensional Potential Problems

An adaptive fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) for general three-dimensional (3-D) potential problems is presented in this paper. This adaptive FMBEM uses an adaptive tree structure that can balance the multipole to local translations (M2L) and the direct evaluations of the near-field integrals, and thus can reduce the number of the more costly direct evaluations. Furthermore, the coefficients used in the preconditioner for the iterative solver (GMRES) are stored and used repeatedly in the direct evaluations of the near-field contributions. In this way, the computational efficiency of the adaptive FMBEM is improved significantly. The adaptive FMBEM can be applied to both the original FMBEM formulation and the new FMBEM with diagonal translations. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the adaptive FMBEM for studying large-scale 3-D potential problems. The adaptive FMBEM is found to be about 50% faster than the non-adaptive version of the new FMBEM in solving the model (with 558,000 elements) for porous materials studied in this paper. The computational efficiencies and accuracies of the FMBEM as compared with the finite element method (FEM) are also studied using a heat-sink model. It is found that the adaptive FMBEM is especially advantageous in modeling problems with complicated domains for which free meshes with much more finite elements would be needed with the FEM.