Null‐field approach for Laplace problems with circular boundaries using degenerate kernels

In this article, a semi‐analytical method for solving the Laplace problems with circular boundaries using the null‐field integral equation is proposed. The main gain of using the degenerate kernels is to avoid calculating the principal values. To fully utilize the geometry of circular boundary, degenerate kernels for the fundamental solution and Fourier series for boundary densities are incorporated into the null‐field integral equation. An adaptive observer system is considered to fully employ the property of degenerate kernels in the polar coordinates. A linear algebraic system is obtained without boundary discretization. By matching the boundary condition, the unknown coefficients can be determined. The present method can be seen as one kind of semianalytical approaches since error only attributes to the truncated Fourier series. For the eccentric case, vector decomposition technique for the normal and tangential directions is carefully considered in implementing the hypersingular equation in mathematical essence although we transform it to summability to divergent series. The five advantages, well‐posed linear algebraic system, principal value free, elimination of boundary‐layer effect, exponential convergence, and mesh free, are achieved. Several examples involving infinite, half‐plane, and bounded domains with circular boundaries are given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2009