A symmetric boundary element model for the analysis of Kirchhoff plates (Q1005088)

The paper deals with the formulation and implementation of a new symmetric boundary element model for the analysis of thin Kirchhoff plates. The aim is to avoide the manipulations associated with the regularization process, and to treat the singularities using an analytical integration technique. The formulation consists of five equations associated with two static sources (force and couple), two kinematic sources (normal slope and transversal displacement discontinuities) and a corner source (tangent rotation discontinuity). These equations are used together with the Betti theorem in order to derive the boundary integral formulation which leads to a symmetric system. Particular attention is paid to the discretization of boundary variables by shape functions selected so that they ensure continuity over the boundary and symmetry of the matrix system. The shape functions are compactly supported polynomials having enough continuity for regularizing the singular boundary integrals. The evaluation of the highly singular boundary integrals for overlapped integration domains is performed in closed form, using a limit approach which provides self-contributions as limit values of non-singular terms. The authors also discuss the corner effects and their treatment in the numerical procedure. Some tests for plates with different boundary conditions illustrate the efficiency of the proposed model. Numerical solutions obtained by the present model are compared with the classical series solutions and with known numerical results.