On hypersingular surface integrals in the symmetric Galerkin boundary element method: application to heat conduction in exponentially graded materials

A symmetric Galerkin formulation and implementation for heat conduction in a three-dimensional functionally graded material is presented. The Green’s function of the graded problem, in which the thermal conductivity varies exponentially in one co-ordinate, is used to develop a boundary-only formulation without any domain discretization. The main task is the evaluation of hypersingular and singular integrals, which is carried out using a direct ‘limit to the boundary’ approach. However, due to complexity of the Green’s function for graded materials, the usual direct limit procedures have to be modified, incorporating Taylor expansions to obtain expressions that can be integrated analytically. Several test examples are provided to verify the numerical implementation. The results of test calculations are in good agreement with exact solutions and corresponding finite element method simulations. Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.