A BOUNDARY-ELEMENT FORMULATION BASED ON THE 3-DIMENSIONAL ELASTOSTATIC FUNDAMENTAL SOLUTION FOR THE INFINITE-LAYER .1. THEORETICAL AND NUMERICAL DEVELOPMENT

This work presents a specialization of the integral identities used in the boundary element method. This modification is especially tailored to deal with three-dimensional elastostatic problems involving geometries which contain two parallel planar surfaces (e.g. three-dimensional plate problems). The formulation makes use of the three-dimensional fundamental solution for a point load acting in the interior of an infinite layer of uniform thickness (obtained by Benitez and Rosakis8,9). It is shown that this procedure is especially suited for the analysis of three-dimensional problems involving cavities in plate structures. In such problems it is demonstrated that, in addition to the cavity surfaces, only the lateral surfaces of the structure need to be discretized, with no discretization required on the traction-free parallel surfaces.