Inverse boundary traction reconstruction with the BEM (Q675471)

A boundary integral formulation is presented for the solution of the inverse elastostatics problem of reconstructing missing boundary tractions in two-dimensional structural members. The formulation starts with an initial guess for the magnitude, extent and location of the missing boundary tractions and proceeds towards the final traction distribution in a sequence of iterative steps. The inverse problem is written as an optimization problem with the objective function being the sum of the squares of the differences between the measured quantities at each sensor location and the corresponding computed quantities for the assumed boundary traction distribution. The constraints that the missing traction distribution lies within a certain portion of the boundary of the object are imposed. A series of numerical examples involving the reconstruction of linear, parabolic and trigonometric boundary tractions, respectively, are solved using the present approach.