2.7 Conclusion

The Boundary Element Method (BEM) has been developed from the perspective of the Method of Weighted Residuals following the approach taken in the Finite Element Method. The BEM is a singular integral equation based method and discretization methods utilized to solve these equations have common features to those used in the FEM expect that singularities have to be addressed from the computational point of view. The distinguishing feature of the technique is the reduction of the problem dimension by one for those problems for which a fundamental solution can be found.