An adaptive boundary element scheme for steady thermoelastostatic analysis Original Research Article

Previously developed adaptive boundary element h-refinement scheme called ‘sample point error analysis and related mesh refinement by extended error indicator’ is applied to the linear and steady thermoelastic problem. Thermal and elastic analyses are divided into two stages, for which two different methodologies for boundary element adaptation are tried. Difficulties in this approach are that the boundary element distribution is preferable in common for both analyses and that influence magnitudes of element error on solution inconsistencies of temperature and of displacement are taken into account individually. Approximate but sufficiently sound strategy is developed and applied to two-dimensional examples; the results prove the usefulness of the scheme.