Boundary element analysis of uncoupled transient thermo-elastic problems with time- and space-dependent heat sources

A boundary element method (BEM) for the analysis of two- and three-dimensional uncoupled transient thermo-elastic problems involving time- and space-dependent heat sources is presented. The domain integrals are efficiently treated using the Cartesian transformation and the radial integration methods without considering any internal cells. Similar to the dual reciprocity method (DRM), some internal points without any connectivity are considered; however, in contrast to the DRM, any arbitrary mesh-free interpolation method can be used in the present formulation. There is no need to find any particular solutions and the shape functions in the mesh-free interpolation method can be arbitrary and sufficiently complicated. Unlike the DRM, the generated system of equations contains the unknowns only on the boundary. After finding the primary unknowns on the boundary, the temperature, displacement, and stress components at all internal points can directly be found without solving any system of equations. Three examples with different forms of heat sources are presented to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method. Although the proposed BEM is mathematically more complicated than domain methods, such as the finite element method (FEM), it is more efficient from a modelling viewpoint since only the surface mesh has to be generated in the presented method.