Boundary Integral Equation Approach Research Articles

Influence of Cylindrical Harmonic SH Waves on Motion along a Random Interface between Two Elastic Half-Spaces

Abstract This study investigates how a system of incident harmonic waves affects the interface motion between two materials. To that end diffraction of a system of cylindrical harmonic SH waves by a random interface between two elastic half-spaces is investigated using a direct boundary integral equation approach. In particular, the incident system consists of a primary source of unit amplitude and an arbitrary number of secondary sources placed along an ellipse centered at the primary source. The interface peak amplitude, the number of the secondary sources, and the frequency are assumed to be arbitrary. Response along the random interface is computed for different frequencies and the source configurations. The interface motion is found to strongly depend upon the incident system. Two incident system configurations are identified that produce the interface motion that is considerably amplified or reduced when compared to the corresponding displacements due to a single unit primary source. The two systems share the same geometry and the source amplitudes but have different source amplitude phases.

Green's matrices for the 2-D Lame system in regions of irregular shape

A method is proposed for the construction of Green's matrices for mixed boundary value problems in regions of irregular shape for the displacement formulation of the plane problem in theory of elasticity. The method is based on the boundary integral equation approach where a kernel matrix B satisfies the 2-D homogeneous Lame system inside the region. This leads to a regular boundary integral equation where the compensating load is applied to the boundary. The Green's matrix is consequently expressed in terms of the kernel matrix B , the fundamental solution matrix of the homogeneous Lame system and a kernel matrix of the inverse regular integral operator. To calculate the stress components, the kernel matrices are differentiated under the integral sign. The proposed method appears highly effective in computing both displacements and stresses.

Stress intensity factor solutions for two-dimensional elastostatic problems by the hypersingular boundary integral equation

The boundary element method is a numerical method that can be advantageously used for a wide range of engineering problems, including the stress concentration problems encountered in fracture mechanics. In linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM), the stress intensity factor is an important parameter. Cracks, if present in the region experiencing the modes of deformation, increase the stress amplitude significantly and this high stress may lead to premature failure of the engineering components. If the value of the SIF is known, it is possible to predict whether the crack will propagate or not. As the conventional boundary integral equation (CBIE) degenerates when a mathematical crack is modelled, a previously developed dual boundary integral equation approach has been adopted in the current work. It utilizes the hypersingular boundary integral equation (HBIE) along with the CBIE. A weakly singular form of HBIE is utilized in the current work to eliminate the hypersingularity analytically. Stress intensity factors are evaluated using the crack opening displacement (COD), displacement extrapolation (DE), and the J-integral approaches. A stand-alone code has been developed for calculating the stress intensity factors of general two-dimensional domains with cracks. The code has been validated by evaluating the stress intensity factors for the standard components, for which the stress intensity factor values are available in the literature. Accurate and well-converged results are obtained proving the robustness of the code. A linear combination of the CBIE and HBIE was applied at the crack and a significant (87–97 per cent) reduction in the condition numbers for the system of equations was observed for the examples studied. Again, the results obtained are accurate and well converged.

Analysis of fluid‐structure interaction in low pressure MEMS by Integral Equations

AbstractThe evaluation of gas dissipation occurring in inertial polysilicon MEMS is addressed focusing the attention on the free–molecule flow. In this regime, which is very often of interest for industrial applications, collisions between molecules can be neglected and the momentum transfer to the moving shuttle can be easily computed. Since the surfaces of silicon MEMS are generally very rough, a complete diffusion model is adopted to describe the wall–molecule interaction. A Boundary Integral Equation approach is proposed and it is shown that the introduction of the key assumption of small perturbations is crucial in the development of a robust and fast numerical tool. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

On a deterministic approach for the evaluation of gas damping in inertial MEMS in the free-molecule regime

The evaluation of gas dissipation occurring in inertial polysilicon MEMS is addressed focusing the attention on the free-molecule flow. In this regime, which is very often of interest for industrial applications, collisions between molecules can be neglected and the momentum transfer to the moving shuttle can be easily computed. Since the surfaces of silicon MEMS are generally very rough, a complete diffusion model is adopted to describe the wall–molecule interaction. A Boundary Integral Equation approach is proposed and compared to a classical Test Particle Monte Carlo method, pointing out the clear advantages of the former for the applications at hand. It is shown that the introduction of the key assumptions of small perturbations and quasi-static response is crucial in the development of a robust and fast numerical tool. Several examples are presented validating the formulation with analytical and experimental results.

Shear deformation effect in flexural–torsional vibrations of beams by BEM

In this paper, a boundary element method is developed for the general flexural–torsional vibration problem of Timoshenko beams of arbitrarily shaped cross section taking into account the effects of warping stiffness, warping and rotary inertia and shear deformation. The beam is subjected to arbitrarily transverse and/or torsional distributed or concentrated loading, while its edges are restrained by the most general linear boundary conditions. The resulting initial boundary value problem, described by three coupled partial differential equations, is solved employing a boundary integral equation approach. Besides the effectiveness and accuracy of the developed method, a significant advantage is that the displacements as well as the stress resultants are computed at any cross-section of the beam using the respective integral representations as mathematical formulae. All basic equations are formulated with respect to the principal shear axes coordinate system, which does not coincide with the principal bending one in a nonsymmetric cross section. To account for shear deformations, the concept of shear deformation coefficients is used. Six boundary value problems are formulated with respect to the transverse displacements, to the angle of twist, to the primary warping function and to two stress functions and solved using the Analog Equation Method, a BEM based method. Both free and forced vibrations are examined. Several beams are analysed to illustrate the method and demonstrate its efficiency and wherever possible its accuracy.

Flexural-torsional buckling analysis of composite beams by BEM including shear deformation effect

In this paper, a boundary element method is developed for the general flexural-torsional linear buckling analysis of Timoshenko beams of arbitrarily shaped composite cross-section. The composite beam consists of materials in contact, each of which can surround a finite number of inclusions. The materials have different elasticity and shear moduli with same Poisson’s ratio and are firmly bonded together. The beam is subjected to a compressive centrally applied load together with arbitrarily axial, transverse and/or torsional distributed loading, while its edges are restrained by the most general linear boundary conditions. The resulting boundary value problem, described by three coupled ordinary differential equations, is solved employing a boundary integral equation approach. Besides the effectiveness and accuracy of the developed method, a significant advantage is that the method can treat composite beams of both thin and thick walled cross-sections taking into account the warping along the thickness of the walls, while the displacements as well as the stress resultants are computed at any cross-section of the beam using the respective integral representations as mathematical formulae. All basic equations are formulated with respect to the principal shear axes coordinate system, which does not coincide with the principal bending one in a nonsymmetric cross-section. To account for shear deformations, the concept of shear deformation coefficients is used. Six coupled boundary value problems are formulated with respect to the transverse displacements, to the angle of twist, to the primary warping function and to two stress functions and solved using the analog equation method, a BEM based method. Several beams are analysed to illustrate the method and demonstrate its efficiency. The significant influence of the boundary conditions and the shear deformation effect on the buckling load are investigated through examples with great practical interest.

The boundary integral equation approach for numerical solution of the one‐dimensional Sine‐Gordon equation

AbstractThis article describes a numerical method based on the boundary integral equation and dual reciprocity method for solving the one‐dimensional Sine‐Gordon (SG) equation. The time derivative is approximated by the time‐stepping method and a predictor–corrector scheme is employed to deal with the nonlinearity which appears in the problem. Numerical results are presented for some problems to demonstrate the usefulness and accuracy of this approach. In addition, the conservation of energy in SG equation is investigated. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 2008

An alternating boundary integral based method for a Cauchy problem for the Laplace equation in semi-infinite regions

We consider a Cauchy problem for the Laplace equation in a two-dimensional semi-infinite region with a bounded inclusion, i.e. the region is the intersection between a half-plane and the exterior of a bounded closed curve contained in the half-plane. The Cauchy data are given on the unbounded part of the boundary of the region and the aim is to construct the solution on the boundary of the inclusion. In 1989, Kozlov and Maz'ya [10] proposed an alternating iterative method for solving Cauchy problems for general strongly elliptic and formally self-adjoint systems in bounded domains. We extend their approach to our setting and in each iteration step mixed boundary value problems for the Laplace equation in the semi-infinite region are solved. Well-posedness of these mixed problems are investigated and convergence of the alternating procedure is examined. For the numerical implementation an efficient boundary integral equation method is proposed, based on the indirect variant of the boundary integral equation approach. The mixed problems are reduced to integral equations over the (bounded) boundary of the inclusion. Numerical examples are included showing the feasibility of the proposed method.

“New-version-fast-multipole-method” accelerated electrostatic calculations in biomolecular systems

In this paper, we present an efficient and accurate numerical algorithm for calculating the electrostatic interactions in biomolecular systems. In our scheme, a boundary integral equation (BIE) approach is applied to discretize the linearized Poisson–Boltzmann (PB) equation. The resulting integral formulas are well conditioned for single molecule cases as well as for systems with more than one macromolecule, and are solved efficiently using Krylov subspace based iterative methods such as generalized minimal residual (GMRES) or biconjugate gradient stabilized (BiCGStab) methods. In each iteration, the convolution type matrix–vector multiplications are accelerated by a new version of the fast multipole method (FMM). The implemented algorithm is asymptotically optimal O(N) both in CPU time and memory usage with optimized prefactors. Our approach enhances the present computational ability to treat electrostatics of large scale systems in protein–protein interactions and nano particle assembly processes. Applications including calculating the electrostatics of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) and interactions between protein Sso7d and DNA are presented.

A dual BIE approach for large‐scale modelling of 3‐D electrostatic problems with the fast multipole boundary element method

AbstractA dual boundary integral equation (BIE) formulation is presented for the analysis of general 3‐D electrostatic problems, especially those involving thin structures. This dual BIE formulation uses a linear combination of the conventional BIE and hypersingular BIE on the entire boundary of a problem domain. Similar to crack problems in elasticity, the conventional BIE degenerates when the field outside a thin body is investigated, such as the electrostatic field around a thin conducting plate. The dual BIE formulation, however, does not degenerate in such cases. Most importantly, the dual BIE is found to have better conditioning for the equations using the boundary element method (BEM) compared with the conventional BIE, even for domains with regular shapes. Thus the dual BIE is well suited for implementation with the fast multipole BEM. The fast multipole BEM for the dual BIE formulation is developed based on an adaptive fast multiple approach for the conventional BIE. Several examples are studied with the fast multipole BEM code, including finite and infinite domain problems, bulky and thin plate structures, and simplified comb‐drive models having more than 440 thin beams with the total number of equations above 1.45 million and solved on a PC. The numerical results clearly demonstrate that the dual BIE is very effective in solving general 3‐D electrostatic problems, as well as special cases involving thin perfect conducting structures, and that the adaptive fast multipole BEM with the dual BIE formulation is very efficient and promising in solving large‐scale electrostatic problems. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Study on the Inverse Analysis of Body Force Dipole Distribution Using Surface Stresses (1st Report, Dimensional Basic Solutions of a Body Force Dipole)

This paper proposes an analytical method to determine the stress distribution in an elastic body using the stress measured on the surface. The basic equation is derived from the boundary integral equation approach introducing a point source which produces displacement and stress fields in the elastic body. The point source is called as a body force dipole and composed of two same body forces acting in the opposite directions at the same location. The basic solutions on the displacement and stress fields by a body force dipole are derived theoretically and are confirmed numerically that they produce the same fields generated by a pair of body forces. Then the input conditions are discussed how the location, the number and the components of known surface stress effect on the accuracy of the inverse analysis of the body force dipole distribution. The results show that only the tangential stress component measured on the surface should be used in the inverse analysis.

Order N algorithm for computation of electrostatic interactions in biomolecular systems

Poisson-Boltzmann electrostatics is a well established model in biophysics; however, its application to large-scale biomolecular processes such as protein-protein encounter is still limited by the efficiency and memory constraints of existing numerical techniques. In this article, we present an efficient and accurate scheme that incorporates recently developed numerical techniques to enhance our computational ability. In particular, a boundary integral equation approach is applied to discretize the linearized Poisson-Boltzmann equation; the resulting integral formulas are well conditioned and are extended to systems with arbitrary numbers of biomolecules. The solution process is accelerated by Krylov subspace methods and a new version of the fast multipole method. In addition to the electrostatic energy, fast calculations of the forces and torques are made possible by using an interpolation procedure. Numerical experiments show that the implemented algorithm is asymptotically optimal O(N) in both CPU time and required memory, and application to the acetylcholinesterase-fasciculin complex is illustrated.

Analysis method of planar cracks of arbitrary shape in the isotropic plane of a three-dimensional transversely isotropic magnetoelectroelastic medium

The hyper-singular boundary integral equation method of crack analysis in three-dimensional transversely isotropic magnetoelectroelastic media is proposed. Based on the fundamental solutions or Green’s functions of three-dimensional transversely isotropic magnetoelectroelastic media and the corresponding Somigliana identity, the boundary integral equations for a planar crack of arbitrary shape in the plane of isotropy are obtained in terms of the extended displacement discontinuities across crack faces. The extended displacement discontinuities include the displacement discontinuities, the electric potential discontinuity and the magnetic potential discontinuity, and correspondingly the extended tractions on crack face represent the conventional tractions, the electric displacement and the magnetic induction boundary values. The near crack tip fields and the intensity factors in terms of the extended displacement discontinuities are derived by boundary integral equation approach. A solution method is proposed by use of the analogy between the boundary integral equations of the magnetoelectroelastic media and the purely elastic materials. The influence of different electric and magnetic boundary conditions, i.e., electrically and magnetically impermeable and permeable conditions, electrically impermeable and magnetically permeable condition, and electrically permeable and magnetically impermeable condition, on the solutions is studied. The crack opening model is proposed to consider the real crack opening and the electric and magnetic fields in the crack cavity under combined mechanical-electric-magnetic loadings. An iteration approach is presented for the solution of the non-linear model. The exact solution is obtained for the case of uniformly applied loadings on the crack faces. Numerical results for a square crack under different electric and magnetic boundary conditions are displayed to demonstrate the proposed method.

Analysis of plates stiffened by parallel beams

AbstractIn this paper a general solution for the analysis of plates stiffened by parallel beams subjected to an arbitrary loading is presented. According to the proposed model, the stiffening beams are isolated from the plate by sections in the lower outer surface of the plate, taking into account the arising tractions in all directions at the fictitious interfaces. The aforementioned integrated tractions result in the loading of the beams as well as the additional loading of the plate. Their distribution is established by applying continuity conditions in all directions at the interfaces. The analysis of both the plate and the beams is accomplished on their deformed shape taking into account second‐order effects. Six boundary value problems with respect to the plate transverse deflection, to the plate inplane displacement components, to the beam transverse deflections, to the beam axial deformation and to the beam non‐uniform angle of twist are formulated and solved using the analog equation method (AEM), a boundary element method (BEM)‐based method employing a boundary integral equation approach. The solution of the aforementioned plate and beam problems, which are non‐linearly coupled, is achieved using iterative numerical methods. The adopted model describes better the actual response of the plate beams system and permits the evaluation of the shear forces at the interfaces in both directions, the knowledge of which is very important in the design of prefabricated ribbed plates. The evaluated lateral deflections of the plate–beams system are found to exhibit considerable discrepancy from those of other models, which neglect inplane and axial forces and deformations. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Dual BIE approaches for modeling electrostatic MEMS problems with thin beams and accelerated by the fast multipole method

Three boundary integral equation (BIE) formulations are investigated for the analysis of electrostatic fields exterior to thin-beam structures as found in some micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). The three BIE formulations are: (1) the regular BIE using only the single-layer potential; (2) the dual BIE (a) using the regular BIE on one surface of a beam and the gradient BIE on the other surface; and (3) the dual BIE (b) using a linear combination of the regular BIE and gradient BIE on all the surfaces of the beam. Similar to crack problems in elasticity, the regular BIE degenerates when the beam thickness tends to zero, while the two dual BIE formulations do not degenerate. Most importantly, the dual BIE (b) is found to be well conditioned for all the values of the beam thickness, and thus well suited for implementation with the fast multipole BEM. The fast multipole BEM for both the regular BIE and the dual BIE (b) formulations are developed and tested on a simplified comb-drive model. The numerical results clearly show that the dual BIEs are very effective in solving MEMS problems with thin beams and the fast multipole BEM with the dual BIE (b) formulation is very efficient in solving large-scale MEMS models.

Direct boundary integral equation method for electromagnetic scattering by partly coated dielectric objects

We present a new variational direct boundary integral equation approach for solving the scattering and transmission problem for dielectric objects partially coated with a PEC layer. The main idea is to use the electromagnetic Calderon projector along with transmission conditions for the electromagnetic fields. This leads to a symmetric variational formulation which lends itself to Galerkin discretization by means of divergence-conforming discrete surface currents. A wide array of numerical experiments confirms the efficacy of the new method.

Numerical analysis of doubly periodic array of cracks/rigid-line inclusions in an infinite isotropic medium using the boundary integral equation method

In this paper, the boundary integral equation approaches are used to study the doubly periodic array of cracks/rigid-line inclusions in an infinite isotropic plane medium. For the doubly periodic rigid-line inclusion problems, the special integral equation containing the axial and shear forces within the rigid-line inclusion is used. The doubly periodic crack problems are dealt with using the displacement discontinuous integral equation approach. Stress intensity factors, effective elastic properties for doubly periodic array of cracks/rigid-line inclusions are calculated and compared with the available numerical solutions.

Transmission through arbitrary apertures in metal-coated dielectric bodies

We present a new variational direct boundary integral equation approach for solving the scattering and transmission problem for dielectric objects partially coated with a PEC layer. The main idea is to use the electromagnetic Calderon projector along with transmission conditions for the electromagnetic fields. This leads to a symmetric variational formulation which lends itself to Galerkin discretization by means of divergence conforming discrete surface currents (aka RWG functions). Several numerical experiments confirm the efficacy of the new method.

Boundary integral equation method for conductive cracks in two and three-dimensional transversely isotropic piezoelectric media

Using the fundamental solutions and the Somigliana identity of piezoelectric medium, the boundary integral equations are obtained for a conductive planar crack of arbitrary shape in three-dimensional transversely isotropic piezoelectric medium. The singular behaviors near the crack edge are studied by boundary integral equation approach, and the intensity factors are derived in terms of the displacement discontinuity and the electric displacement boundary value sum near the crack edge on crack faces. The boundary integral equations for two dimensional crack problems are deduced as a special case of infinite strip planar crack. Based on the analogy of the obtained boundary integral equations and those for cracks in conventional isotropic elastic material and for contact problem of half-space under the action of a rigid punch, an analysis method is proposed. As an example, the solution to conductive Griffith crack is derived.