DESIGN SENSITIVITY COEFFICIENTS FOR LINEAR ELASTIC BODIES WITH ZONES AND CORNERS BY THE DERIVATIVE BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD

The subject of this paper is the efficient and accurate determination of design sensitivity coefficients (DSCs) in an elastic solid with zones and corners. Direct differentiation of the relevant derivative boundary element method (DBEM) formulation of the problem is carried out here. Corners and zones in a body are treated carefully with conforming elements. A numerical implementation of the method is carried out with isoparametric quadratic boundary elements. The power of this approach is demonstrated through several numerical examples. It is shown that the DSCs of the various mechanical quantities of interest are obtained accurately and efficiently. In one example, even the DSC of the stress at a corner, with respect to the corner angle, is obtained very accurately by this method. © 1990.