The Boundary Element Method with Programming

This thorough yet understandable introduction to the boundary element method presents an attractive alternative to the finite element method. It not only explains the theory but also presents the implementation of the theory into computer code, the code in FORTRAN 95 can be freely downloaded. The book also addresses the issue of efficiently using parallel processing hardware in order to considerably speed up the computations for large systems. The applications range from problems of heat and fluid flow to static and dynamic elasto-plastic problems in continuum mechanics. After each chapter several exercises are shown, which makes the book suitable as teaching material in a class on the BEM. In addition, the book includes several applications of the method to industrial problems, that show the advantage over other methods.

Gernot Beer is Professor and head of the Institute for Structural Analysis at the Graz University of Technology. He has been involved in the development, teaching and application of the BEM and the coupled BEM/FEM and has written several texts on the subject. He is the author of the commercial program BEFE and heads the development of its successor BEFE++.

Ian M. Smith is Professor of Engineering at the University of Manchester. He has consulted widely on engineering projects and has written several texts on applied numerical analysis.

Christian Dünser is staff scientist at the Institute for Structural Analysis at the Graz University of Technology. Since his diploma thesis he has been working on the BEM and its application to geotechnical problems, in particular tunnelling.