A cell-less boundary element method for a two-step thermoelastic analysis

Abstract

A new cell-less boundary element method formulation is presented for two-step thermoelastic analyses. The first step is a steady-state thermal analysis. The second step is a thermoelastic analysis, using the temperature field obtained in the first step. Domain integrals involving internal heat sources and thermal strains, that appear in the governing boundary integral equations, are transformed to boundary by the radial integration method. Since temperature has been evaluated only at discrete points in the first step, meshfree techniques for defining shape functions are adopted to calculate temperature at numerical integration points during evaluation of radial integrations of the second step. Two classes of such techniques are considered: the moving least square procedure and the radial point interpolation method. Representative examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed formulation.