Analytic integration of singular kernels for boundary element analysis of plane orthotropic media

Both composite materials and stress concentration are common issues in modern structural engineering. In this paper, analytical integration of the singular kernels is performed for boundary element analysis (BEM) of elastic, plane orthotropic media with stress concentrations. Analytical integration leads to accuracy and efficiency improvements over FEM. Furthermore, high continuity (HC), quadratic spline interpolation on the boundary is used to further improve accuracy at low computational cost when compared to FEM. The advantages of BEM for calculation of displacements and stresses near stress raisers in orthotropic plates are shown. Particular attention is paid to efficient interpolation for approximating boundary quantities and to precision of computation for evaluating boundary integrals. Such improvements lead to accurate computation of both displacements and stresses in both the boundary and the domain. Thus, the advantages of the proposed method are accuracy and low computational cost.