A scaled boundary finite element method for cyclically symmetric two-dimensional elastic analysis

A SBFEM (scaled boundary finite element method) based approach is developed for numerical analysis of 2-D elastic systems with rotationally periodic (or cyclic) symmetry under arbitrary load conditions. It is shown that the coefficient matrices of the global SBFEM equations for the rotationally periodic system are block-circulant when a symmetry-adapted reference co-ordinate system is used. Furthermore, both the eigenproblem and stiffness matrix equation are partitioned into a series of independent sub-problems. By solving these sub-problems via a partitioning algorithm, solution of the whole problem can be obtained at low computing expense. Two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed approach.