Boundary elements for engineers

About this book

This book is designed to make BEM more accessible to students and engineers looking for a concise overview of the method and the mathematics behind it. The book also contains many examples of realistic engineering analysis problems, describing how the BEM can be applied most effectively. The problem with the boundary element method is that, although to the end-user BEM software appears refreshingly simple, the theory behind it is rarely described with anything approaching that simplicity. Text books are widely available for the academic engineer, but not so for the practising engineer. This book addresses the engineer's requirements of a technical book including: the need to see an overview of the theoretical formulation written in terms of engineering instead of pure mathematics; and enough theory to feel comfortable with the use of BEM software in production analysis, but not in a level of detail which overcomplicates and clouds the main issues. The book provides example application areas, and most importantly some indications of how to use BEM software effectively in practice for real engineering problems. This book results from several years of experience in working with a commercial boundary element software package, BEASY, in a training and support environment to industrial corporations using the code. In this way, the book provides a combination of theory and practice in the application of boundary elements to real world engineering.