Over the past decades, the Boundary Element Method has emerged as a ver satile and powerful tool for the solution of engineering problems, presenting in many cases an alternative to the more widely used Finite Element Method. As with any numerical method, the engineer or scientist who applies it to a practical problem needs to be acquainted with, and understand, its basic principles to be able to apply it correctly and be aware of its limitations. It is with this intention that we have endeavoured to write this book: to give the student or practitioner an easy-to-understand introductory course to the method so as to enable him or her to apply it judiciously. As the title suggests, this book not only serves as an introductory course, but also cov ers some advanced topics that we consider important for the researcher who needs to be up-to-date with new developments. This book is the result of our teaching experiences with the Boundary Element Method, along with research and consulting activities carried out in the field. Its roots lie in a graduate course on the Boundary Element Method given by the authors at the university of Stuttgart. The experiences gained from teaching and the remarks and questions of the students have contributed to shaping the 'Introductory course' (Chapters 1-8) to the needs of the stu dents without assuming a background in numerical methods in general or the Boundary Element Method in particular.

This book is devoted to the mathematical analysis of the numerical solution of boundary integral equations treating boundary value, transmission and contact problems arising in elasticity, acoustic and electromagnetic scattering. It serves as the mathematical foundation of the boundary element methods (BEM) both for static and dynamic problems. The book presents a systematic approach to the variational methods for boundary integral equations including the treatment with variational inequalities for contact problems. It also features adaptive BEM, hp-version BEM, coupling of finite and boundary element methods – efficient computational tools that have become extremely popular in applications. Familiarizing readers with tools like Mellin transformation and pseudodifferential operators as well as convex and nonsmooth analysis for variational inequalities, it concisely presents efficient, state-of-the-art boundary element approximations and points to up-to-date research. The authors are well known for their fundamental work on boundary elements and related topics, and this book is a major contribution to the modern theory of the BEM (especially for error controlled adaptive methods and for unilateral contact and dynamic problems) and is a valuable resource for applied mathematicians, engineers, scientists and graduate students.

The IUTAM Symposium on Advanced Boundary Element Methods brought together both established and current researchers in the broad context of applications of BEM technology. The goal of the Symposium was to provide both a formal and an informal forum for the interchange of ideas and the stimulation of new research directions.

This work presents a thorough treatment of boundary element methods (BEM) for solving strongly elliptic boundary integral equations obtained from boundary reduction of elliptic boundary value problems in $\mathbb{R}^3$. The book is self-contained, the prerequisites on elliptic partial differential and integral equations being presented in Chapters 2 and 3. The main focus is on the development, analysis, and implementation of Galerkin boundary element methods, which is one of the most flexible and robust numerical discretization methods for integral equations. For the efficient realization of the Galerkin BEM, it is essential to replace time-consuming steps in the numerical solution process with fast algorithms. In Chapters 5-9 these methods are developed, analyzed, and formulated in an algorithmic way.

Finite element methods are the most popular methods for solving partial differential equations numerically, and despite having a history of more than 50 years, there is still active research on their analysis, application and extension. This book features overview papers and original research articles from participants of the 30th Chemnitz Finite Element Symposium, which itself has a 40-year history. Covering topics including numerical methods for equations with fractional partial derivatives; isogeometric analysis and other novel discretization methods, like space-time finite elements and boundary elements; analysis of a posteriori error estimates and adaptive methods; enhancement of efficient solvers of the resulting systems of equations, discretization methods for partial differential equations on surfaces; and methods adapted to applications in solid and fluid mechanics, it offers readers insights into the latest results.

This thorough yet understandable introduction to the boundary element method presents an attractive alternative to the finite element method. It not only explains the theory but also presents the implementation of the theory into computer code, the code in FORTRAN 95 can be freely downloaded. The book also addresses the issue of efficiently using parallel processing hardware in order to considerably speed up the computations for large systems. The applications range from problems of heat and fluid flow to static and dynamic elasto-plastic problems in continuum mechanics.

Written by two well-respected experts in the field, The Finite Element Method for Boundary Value Problems: Mathematics and Computations bridges the gap between applied mathematics and application-oriented computational studies using FEM. Mathematically rigorous, the FEM is presented as a method of approximation for differential operators that are mathematically classified as self-adjoint, non-self-adjoint, and non-linear, thus addressing totality of all BVPs in various areas of engineering, applied mathematics, and physical sciences. These classes of operators are utilized in various methods of approximation: Galerkin method, Petrov-Galerkin Method, weighted residual method, Galerkin method with weak form, least squares method based on residual functional, etc. to establish unconditionally stable finite element computational processes using calculus of variations. Readers are able to grasp the mathematical foundation of finite element method as well as its versatility of applications. h-, p-, and k-versions of finite element method, hierarchical approximations, convergence, error estimation, error computation, and adaptivity are additional significant aspects of this book.