A boundary-element method for elastostatics in a plane region bounded by a smooth curve

The traditional boundary-element method for elastostatics in a plane region bounded by a smooth curve is modified. A circular element is used for which an analytical scheme for the traction problem is derived. It is shown that the construction of the elements of the coefficient matrix reduces to computing a simple integral which has a closed form solution. This leads to higher accuracy of the final results and considerable saving of computational efforts. The procedure is illustrated by some examples and the accuracy of the method as well as its efficiency are compared with those obtained from commonly used numerical techniques.