Symmetric Galerkin BEM for multi-connected bodies

In this paper, it is shown that the symmetric Galerkin boundary element formulation cannot be used in its standard form for multiple connected bodies. This is because the traction integral equation used for boundaries with Neuman boundary condition give non-unique solutions. While this fact is well known from the classical theory of integral equations, the problem has not been fully addressed in the literature related to symmetric Galerkin formulations. In this paper, the problem is reviewed and a general way to deal with it is proposed. The details of the numerical implementation are discussed and an example is solved to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.