Integral equation formulation for thin shells—revisited

While the matter of solving problems in fracture mechanics with boundary integral equations (BIEs) has received considerable attention, the “conjugate” problem of thin shells has received less. The latter problem is revisited in this work. The attempt here is to clarify certain issues that were not fully addressed in earlier publications. In particular, the issue of consistency of the relevant regularized boundary integral equations, when collocated at corresponding points on two sides of a thin shell, is addressed carefully. Some comments on the corresponding BIE formulation for fracture mechanics problems are made at the end of the paper in order to compare and contrast these two problems.