New Integral Equation Approach to Viscoelastic Problems

Abstract

Computer-oriented numerical methods of solution have been successfully applied to various engineering problems. At the first stage of such developments, finite difference and finite element methods have attracted the attention of scientists and engineers. While rapid developments of these numerical methods in the last thirty years have stimulated a tremendous amount of work in computational techniques and engineering software, important research in basic physical principles such as variational techniques or method of residual was originated. It would be one of the most important consequences in the latter research that the integral equation method was re-considered through finite element techniques and a new numerical method of solution was innovated by some pioneering groups in England and also the U.S. (1). Brebbia’s boundary element book (2) and the International Conference on this subject (3–8) have much contributed to recent years’ rapid advances of the boundary element methods and stimulated a wide variety of boundary element applications in engineering. It can be seen that among various integral equation formulations the direct formulation is most successful and promising for engineering analysis.