On the treatment of corners in the boundary element method (Q809567)

This paper proposes a new technique for treating the boundary element analysis of a region containing geometric discontinuities. The necessary additional equations are obtained by differentiating the usual boundary element integral equation. In order that the singular integrals are reduced to a computationally manageable form, some constraints are placed on the functional approximations at the discontinuities. An algorithm for incorporating these constraints is developed and numerical tests for an exactly solvable three-dimensional Laplace equation problem are presented.