Coupling boundary-elements and finite-elements—A structured approach Original Research Article

Data structures for finite element and boundary element methods are described with special respect of integrating them in a common data template and coupling them in application problems. While structuring data highly, solution procedures may remain moderately simple. So unsymmetric boundary elements may be coupled with symmetric finite elements, while utilizing the special properties of the latter. Furthermore, non-linearities arising from finite elements are included. Basing upon object oriented methods the described data structures may be extended to distributed objects. So large problems may be calculated coupling different numerical methods and using parallel or distributed computing resources.