Boundary element analysis of anisotropic Kirchhoff plates

In this paper, the radial integration method is used to obtain a boundary element formulation without any domain integral for general anisotropic plate bending problems. Two integral equations are used and the unknown variables are assumed to be constant along each boundary element. The domain integral which arises from a transversely applied load is exactly transformed into a boundary integral by a radial integration technique. Uniformly and linearly distributed loads are considered. Several computational examples concerning orthotropic and general anisotropic plate bending problems are presented. The results show good agreement with analytical and finite element results available in the literature.