Boundary element analysis of thin structures using a dual transformation method for weakly singular boundary integrals

Abstract

This paper focuses on the weakly singular integrals in thin structures of 3D boundary element method. In the pioneering woks for the weakly singular integrals, the singularities are eliminated through introducing transformations whose Jacobian at the singular point is zero. When using these methods for weakly singular boundary integrals on elements with a large-angle and large side length ratio, near singularity will appear. In this paper, a dual transformation method is proposed to accurately calculate weakly singular integrals in which the near singularity is also considered. The numerical implementation is divided into several steps. Firstly, the (α, β) coordinate transformation method is used to eliminate the weak singularity by introducing the α factors in the transformation Jacobian. Then extract the integral form with near singularities about β. Finally, a corresponding distance transformation is constructed to eliminate its near singularity. The results show that the proposed method can accurately integrate for arbitrary element shape and source point position. The dual transformation method may be a good choice to evaluate weakly singular integral for thin structural problem.