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Accurate numerical differentiation of approximate data by methods based on Green's second identity often involves singular or nearly singular integrals over domains or their boundaries. This paper applies the finite part integration concept to evaluate such integrals and to generate suitable quadrature formulae. The weak singularity involved in first derivatives is removable; the strong singularities encountered in computing higher derivatives can be reduced. To find derivatives on or near the edge of the integration region, special treatment of boundary integrals is required. Values of normal derivative at points on the edge are obtainable by the method described. Example results are given for derivatives of analytically known functions, as well as results from finite element analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to present an adaptive binary-tree element subdivision method (BTSM) for the evaluation of nearly singular integrals in three-dimensional boundary element method, which can facilitate automatic and high-quality patch generation.

In this method, the nearly singular element is split into two sub-elements. Each sub-element is then examined to determine if it is to be subdivided based on a specific subdivision criterion. The specific subdivision ensures that those sub-elements far from the source point are sparse. And then those sub-elements in close proximity to the source point are replaced by regular triangular elements.

With the proposed method, the sub-elements obtained are automatically refined as they approach the projection point, and they are “good” in shape and size for standard Gaussian quadrature. Thus, the proposed method can be used to evaluate nearly singular integrals accurately for cases of different element shapes and various locations of the source point.

Numerical examples for surface elements with various relative locations of the source point are presented. The results demonstrate that the proposed method has much better accuracy and robustness than some other methods.

For thin cracks, in eddy current testing (ECT), the field‐flaw interaction is equivalent to a current dipole layer on its surface. The dipole density is the solution of an integral equation with a hyperstrong kernel. The variation of coil impedance and eddy current distribution is directly obtained from this density by a surface integration. There is a numerical difficulty to evaluate accurately integrals for the current density near the crack. In fact, due to the singular kernel of a dyadic Green function, the integration is quasi‐singular. A specific regularisation algorithm is developed to overcome this problem and applied to represent eddy current distribution between two cracks.

The purpose of this paper is to preset a spherical element subdivision method for the numerical evaluation of nearly singular integrals in three-dimensional (3D) boundary element method (BEM).

In this method, the source point is first projected to the tangent plane of the element. Then two cases are considered: the projection point is either inside or outside the element. In both cases, the element is subdivided into a number of patches using a sequence of spheres with decreasing radius.

With the proposed method, the patches obtained are automatically refined as they approach the projection point and each patch of the integration element is “good” in shape and size for standard Gaussian quadrature. Therefore, all kinds of nearly singular boundary integrals on elements of any shape and size with arbitrary source point location related to the element can be evaluated accurately and efficiently.

Numerical examples for planar and slender elements with various relative location of the source point are presented. The results demonstrate that our method has much better accuracy, efficiency and stability than conventional methods.

Solutions for the earth return mutual impedance play an important role in analyzing couplings of multi-conductor systems. Generally, the mutual impedance is approximated by Pollaczek integrals. The purpose of this paper is devising fast algorithms for calculation of this kind of improper integrals and its applications.

According to singular points, the Pollaczek integral is divided into two parts: the finite integral and the infinite integral. The finite part is computed by combining an efficient Levin method, which is implemented with a Chebyshev differential matrix. By transforming the integration path, the tail integral is calculated with help of a transformed Clenshaw–Curtis quadrature rule.

Numerical tests show that this new method is robust to high oscillation and nearly singularities. Thus, it is suitable for evaluating Pollaczek integrals. Furthermore, compared with existing method, the presented algorithm gives high-order approaches for the earth return mutual impedance between conductors over a multilayered soil with wide ranges of parameters.

An efficient truncation strategy is proposed to accelerate numerical calculation of Pollaczek integral. Compared with existing algorithms, this method is easier to be applied to computation of similar improper integrals, such as Sommerfeld integral.

The computation of 3‐D eddy current problems is an important topic both in theoretical and engineering areas. Based on Green's theorem, Kost theoretically developed a BEM formulation for general 3‐D nonlinear eddy current problems. The parallel implementation of this formulation in the linear case has been made on a massively parallel supercomputer, where a constant triangular element was used.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an easy-to-implement and accurate fast boundary element method (BEM) for solving large-scale elastodynamic problems in frequency and time domains.

A newly developed kernel-independent fast multipole method (KIFMM) is applied to accelerating the evaluation of displacements, strains and stresses in frequency domain elastodynamic BEM analysis, in which the far-field interactions are evaluated efficiently utilizing equivalent densities and check potentials. Although there are six boundary integrals with unique kernel functions, by using the elastic theory, the authors managed to accelerate these six boundary integrals by KIFMM with the same kind of equivalent densities and check potentials. The boundary integral equations are discretized by Nyström method with curved quadratic elements. The method is further used to conduct the time-domain analysis by using the frequency-domain approach.

Numerical results show that by the fast BEM, high accuracy can be achieved and the computational complexity is brought down to linear. The performance of the present method is further demonstrated by large-scale simulations with more than two millions of unknowns in the frequency domain and one million of unknowns in the time domain. Besides, the method is applied to the topological derivatives for solving elastodynamic inverse problems.

An efficient KIFMM is implemented in the acceleration of the elastodynamic BEM. Combining with the Nyström discretization based on quadratic elements and the frequency-domain approach, an accurate and highly efficient fast BEM is achieved for large-scale elastodynamic frequency domain analysis and time-domain analysis.

Domain integrals, known as volume potentials in 3D elasticity problems, exist in many boundary-type methods, such as the boundary element method (BEM) for inhomogeneous partial differential equations. The purpose of this paper is to develop an accurate and reliable technique to effectively evaluate the volume potentials in 3D elasticity problems.

An adaptive background cell-based domain integration method is proposed for treatment of volume potentials in 3D elasticity problems. The background cells are constructed from the information of the boundary elements based on an oct-tree structure, and the domain integrals are evaluated over the cells rather than volume elements. The cells that contain the boundary elements can be subdivided into smaller sub-cells adaptively according to the sizes and levels of the boundary elements. The fast multipole method (FMM) is further applied in the proposed method to reduce the time complexity of large-scale computation.

The method is a boundary-only discretization method, and it can be applied in the BEM easily. Much computational time is saved by coupling with the FMM. Numerical examples demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method..

Boundary elements are used to create adaptive background cells, and domain integrals are evaluated over the cells rather than volume elements. Large-scale computation is made possible by coupling with the FMM.

3D steady heat conduction analysis considering heat source is conducted on the fundamental of the fast multipole method (FMM)-accelerated line integration boundary element method (LIBEM).

Due to considering the heat source, domain integral is generated in the traditional heat conduction boundary integral equation (BIE), which will counteract the well-known merit of the BEM, namely, boundary-only discretization. To avoid volume discretization, the enhanced BEM, the LIBEM with dimension reduction property is introduced to transfer the domain integral into line integrals. Besides, owing to the unsatisfactory performance of the LIBEM when it comes to large-scale structures requiring massive computation, the FMM-accelerated LIBEM (FM-LIBEM) is proposed to improve the computation efficiency further.

Assuming N and M are the numbers of nodes and integral lines, respectively, the FM-LIBEM can reduce the time complexity from O(NM) to about O(N+ M), and a full discussion and verification of the advantage are done based on numerical examples under heat conduction.

(1) The LIBEM is applied to 3D heat conduction analysis with heat source. (2) The domain integrals can be transformed into boundary integrals with straight line integrals by the LIM. (3) A FM-LIBEM is proposed and can reduce the time complexity from O(NM) to O(N+ M). (4) The FM-LIBEM with high computational efficiency is exerted to solve 3D heat conduction analysis with heat source in massive computation successfully.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the efficiency of the fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) in the analysis of stress and effective properties of 3D linear elastic structures with cavities. In particular, a comparison between the FMBEM and the finite element method (FEM) is performed in terms of accuracy, model size and computation time.

The developed FMBEM uses eight-node Serendipity boundary elements with numerical integration based on the adaptive subdivision of elements. Multipole and local expansions and translations involve solid harmonics. The proposed model is used to analyse a solid body with two interacting spherical cavities, and to predict the homogenized response of a porous material under linear displacement boundary condition. The FEM results are generated in commercial codes Ansys and MSC Patran/Nastran, and the results are compared in terms of accuracy, model size and execution time. Analytical solutions available in the literature are also considered.

FMBEM and FEM approximate the geometry with similar accuracy and provide similar results. However, FMBEM requires a model size that is smaller by an order of magnitude in terms of the number of degrees of freedom. The problems under consideration can be solved by using FMBEM within the time comparable to the FEM with an iterative solver.

The present results are limited to linear elasticity.

This work is a step towards a comprehensive efficiency evaluation of the FMBEM applied to selected problems of micromechanics, by comparison with the commercial FEM codes.