2.6 Applications of the BEM to Heat Transfer and Inverse Problems Available to Purchase

In this chapter we will consider specialized applications of the BEM in heat transfer. Specifically, we will consider application of heat transfer for axisymmetric problems, that lays down the groundwork for a very useful result in certain cases of heat conduction in nonhomogeneous media with linearly varying thermal conductivity as well as heat transfer in thin plates and extended surfaces that utilizes a fundamental solution that can be utilized in treating linear heat diffusion problems by the Laplace transform method. This is followed by a discussion of practical applications of the BEM to large-scale three dimensional problems and detailed treatment of domain decomposition methods is provided along with some industrial applications. Finally, utilization of the BEM is presented as a suitable field solver for inverse problems problems, and consideration is given to the solution of the inverse geometric problem for the detection of subsurface flaw and cavities.