Boundary Element Methods
Introduction
Definition
Boundary integral equations are a classical tool for the analysis of boundary value problems for partial differential equations. The term “ boundary element method” (BEM) denotes any method for the approximate numerical solution of these boundary integral equations. The approximate solution of the boundary value problem obtained by BEM has the distinguishing feature that it is an exact solution of the differential equation in the domain and is parametrized by a finite set of parameters living on the boundary.
Advantages
The BEM have some advantages over other numerical methods like finite element methods (FEM) or finite differences: 1. Only the boundary of the domain needs to be discretized. Especially in two dimensions where the boundary is just a curve this allows very simple data input and storage methods. 2. Exterior problems with unbounded domains but bounded boundaries are handled as easily as interior problems. 3. In some applications, the physically relevant data are given not by the solution in the interior of the domain but rather by the boundary values of the solution or its derivatives. These data can be obtained directly from the solution of boundary integral equations, whereas boundary values obtained from FEM solutions are in general not very accurate. 4. The solution in the interior of the domain is approximated with a rather high convergence rate and moreover, the same rate of convergence holds for all derivatives of anyorder of the solution in the domain. There are difficulties, however, if the solution has to be evaluated close to, but not on the boundary.
Difficult parts Some main difficulties with BEM are the following:
1. Boundary integral equations require the explicit knowledge of a fundamental solution of the differential equation. This is available only for linear partial differential equations with constant or some specifically variable coefficients. Problems with inhomogeneities or nonlinear differential equations are in general not accessible by pure BEM. Sometimes, however, a coupling of FEM and BEM proves to be useful, see section 7.
2. For a given boundary value problem there exist different boundary integral equations and to each of them several numerical approximation methods. Thus every BEM application requires that several choices be made. To evaluate the different possibilities, one needs a lot of mathematical analysis. Although the analysis of BEM has been a field of active research in the past decade, it is by no means complete. Thus there exist no error estimates for several methods that are widely used. From a mathematical point of view, these methods, which include very popular ones for which computer codes are available, are in an experimental state, and there might exist problems of reliability.
3. The reason for the difficulty of the mathematical analysis is that boundary integral equations frequently are not ordinary Fredholm integral equations of the second kind. The classical theory of integral equations and their numerical solution concentrates on second kind integral equations with regular kernel, however. Boundary integral equations may be of the first kind, and the kernels are in general singular. If the singularities are not integrable, one has to regularize the integrals which are then defined in a distributional sense. The theoretical framework for such integral equations is the theory of pseudodifferential operators. This theory was developed 20 years ago and is now a classical part of Mathematical Analysis [16, 19], but it is still not very popular within Applied Mathematics.
4. If the boundary is not smooth but has corners and edges, then the solution of the boundary value problem has singularities at the boundary. This happens also if the boundary conditions are discontinuous, e.g. in mixed boundary value problems. BEM clearly have to treat these singularities more directly than FEM. Because the precise shape of the singularities frequently contains important information, e.g. stress intensity factors in fracture mechanics, this is a positive aspect of BEM. But besides practical problems with the numerical treatment of these singularities, non-smooth domains also present theoretical difficulties. These have so far been satisfactorily resolved only for two-dimensional problems. The analysis of BEM for three-dimensional domains with corners and edges is still in a rather incomplete stage.
Literature
The usefulness of BEM in engineering problems is documented in a literature that amounts to several thousand pages every year. I will not attempt to give an overview of the wide range of possible applications. One can find such an overview e.g. in one of the proceedingsof the annual conference on Boundary Elements [5] or in the books[4] or [8]. A review of BEM computer codes can be found in [17]. Introductions to the theory and applications of BEM can e.g. be found in the books [7, 6, 9, 29] or in[25, 24]
A scheme
A typical application of BEM consists of the following parts:
• Mathematical model
• Representation formula
• Boundary integral equation
• Boundary elements
• Discrete equations
• Solution of the linear system
• Interpretation 2.2 Discussion of the scheme For the following discussion of these parts, the Dirichlet problem for Laplace’s equation will be used as an illustration.