A Direct Boundary Element Method for Elastic Bending Analysis of Plates

Abstract

This paper is concerned with an efficient application of the direct boundary element method to plate bending analysis. Fundamental features of the boundary element formulation are first discussed, then a new procedure is proposed for the rational treatment of corner point variables of the plate. The proposed method make use of the directional derivative of the integral equation for deflection, to provide the necessary number of integral equations at the corner point. A number of sample problems including various boundary conditions are computed and the results obtained are compared with available ones, whereby the potential usefulness of the proposed method is demonstrated.