Rigid body mode and spurious mode in the dual boundary element formulation for the Laplace problems

Abstract

In this paper, the general formulation for the static stiffness is analytically derived using the dual integral formulations. It is found that the same stiffness matrix is derived by using the integral equation no matter what the rigid body mode and the complementary solutions are superimposed in the fundamental solution. For the Laplace problem with a circular domain, the circulant was employed to derive the stiffness analytically in the discrete system. In deriving the static stiffness, the degenerate scale problem occurs when the singular influence matrix can not be inverted. The Fredholm alternative theorem and the SVD updating technique are employed to study the degenerate scale problem mathematically and numerically. The direct treatment in the matrix level is achieved to deal with the degenerate scale problems instead of using a modified fundamental solution. The addition of a rigid body term in the fundamental solution is found to shift the zero singular value for the singular matrix without disturbing the stiffness.