Pages 191-197
A New Finite Element by Source method, or FES, has been developed by the authors. FES which has flexible geometrical shape is composed by nodes distributed on the element boundary and sources distributed out of the element boundary. The relation between the intensity of sources and the boundary condition at the nodes is obtained from the combination of the fundamental solution. According to this procedure, we can perform numerical analysis dealing with complex structures such as ships with further less mesh compared with the traditional finite element method and we can obtain more accurate results. This paper presents the application of plate elements for three-dimensional plate structures and some numerical examples to actual ship structures in order to show its usefulness.
