Stress analysis of 3D generally anisotropic elastic solids using the boundary element method

The explicit, closed-form expressions of the Green's functions for generally anisotropic elastic solids in three-dimensions that have been derived using Stroh's formalism are employed in a formulation of the boundary element method (BEM). Unlike several other existing schemes, the evaluation of these fundamental solutions does not require further numerical integration in the BEM algorithm; they have surprisingly not been implemented previously. Three numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the veracity of the implementation and the general applicability of the BEM for the 3D elastic stress analysis of generally anisotropic solids. The results are compared with known solutions in the literature where possible, or those obtained by another numerical method, namely, the finite element method; in all cases, very good agreement is shown to be achieved.