Efficient analytical integration of symmetric Galerkin boundary integrals over curved elements; elasticity formulation (Q1913134)

We report substantial improvements in the computational efficiency of Galerkin boundary element analysis employing curved continuous boundary elements for elasticity problems. A direct analytical treatment of the singular and hypersingular double integrations, employing a limit to the boundary definition, is adapted to gain computational economy. Symbolic manipulation has been employed to derive the analytical expressions for the singular contributions to these double integrals. The analytical regularization procedure separates the potentially singular Galerkin integrands into an essentially singular but simple part, plus a regular remainder that can be integrated numerically. The exact finite contributions from the simplified singular terms are then computed analytically. It is shown that the key to containing the explosive growth in the length of the formulae associated with such a hybrid analytical/numerical integration scheme is the strategic timing of when to take the limit to the boundary.