A Galerkin boundary node method and its convergence analysis

The boundary node method (BNM) exploits the dimensionality of the boundary integral equation (BIE) and the meshless attribute of the moving least-square (MLS) approximations. However, since MLS shape functions lack the property of a delta function, it is difficult to exactly satisfy boundary conditions in BNM. Besides, the system matrices of BNM are non-symmetric.A Galerkin boundary node method (GBNM) is proposed in this paper for solving boundary value problems. In this approach, an equivalent variational form of a BIE is used for representing the governing equation, and the trial and test functions of the variational formulation are generated by the MLS approximation. As a result, boundary conditions can be implemented accurately and the system matrices are symmetric. Total details of numerical implementation and error analysis are given for a general BIE. Taking the Dirichlet problem of Laplace equation as an example, we set up a framework for error estimates of GBNM. Some numerical examples are also given to demonstrate the efficacity of the method.