A New Boundary Element Method for the Biharmonic Equation with Dirichlet Boundary Conditions

We consider a scalar boundary integral formulation for the biharmonic equation based on the Almansi representation. This formulation was derived by the first author in an earlier paper. Our aim here is to prove the ellipticity of the integral operator and hence establish convergence of and error bounds for Galerkin boundary element methods. The theory applies both in two and three dimensions, but only for star-shaped domains. Numerical results in two dimensions confirm our analysis.