Omar al-Farouk S. al–Damluji; Mohammed Yousif Fattah
Abstract
Stress analysis problems in geomechanics are ideally suited to the method of boundaryelements, as this technique usually requires a very small number of nodes bycomparison to finite ...
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Stress analysis problems in geomechanics are ideally suited to the method of boundaryelements, as this technique usually requires a very small number of nodes bycomparison to finite elements. As only the surface of the continuum needs to bediscretized, problems extending to infinity can be described by a very small numberof elements on the soil surface or around a tunnel or excavation . In addition, theboundary conditions of the infinite domain can be properly defined using boundaryelements, as the technique is based on fundamental solutions valid for unboundeddomains.Herein, a comparison is made between the finite element method and the boundaryelement method in solving two-dimensional stress analysis problems. It is concludedthat the results of the boundary element method are greatly improved whenincreasing the number of elements, especially at the regions of stress concentration. Agood agreement can be obtained between the results of the two methods. One mustkeep in mind that in the boundary element method, errors due to discretization arerestricted to the boundaries compared to the finite element method where the entiredomain needs to be discretized. This advantage makes the use of the boundaryelement method easier and faster.
