Novel boundary element method for resolving plate bending problems

This paper discusses the application of the boundary contour method for resolving plate bending problems. The exploitation of the integrand divergence free property of the plate bending boundary integral equation based on the Kirchhoff hypothesis and a very useful application of Stokes' Theorem are presented to convert surface integrals on boundary elements to the computation of bending potential functions on the discretized boundary points, even for curved surface elements of arbitrary shape. Singularity and treatment of the discontinued corner point are not needed at all. The evaluation of the physics variant at internal points is also shown in this article. Numerical results are presented for some plate bending problems and compared against analytical and previous solutions.