Quadrature and collocation methods for singular integral equations on curves with corners (Q1262735)

A stability analysis of quadrature and spline collocation methods for singular boundary integral equations is presented. There, the boundary is assumed to be a closed curve in the complex plane with a finite number of corners. In order to solve the integral equation, quadrature rules have to be used. Herein, for the sake of simplicity, the rectangle rule is applied where the immediate discretization of the integral equation via the quadrature rule is recommended. Then, for the most frequently used trial functions - piecewise constant functions on uniform partitions - conditions for the stability are established. For this, the problem of stability is reduced to that one for a model problem on an angle utilizing a localization principle, and, Mellin techniques are applied in order to handle the model problems. The proofs, given here, yield not only the sufficiency, but also the necessity of the conditions.