Some applications of the boundary element method in geomechanics

Abstract This paper presents the complete formulation for the application of the Boundary Element Method to solve non‐tension material problems. The formulation is based on including an extra term due to an initial stress field into the boundary integral statement. This is then used to iterate the solution until a state of non‐tension is achieved. The resulting iteration process is very simple to apply and basically consists only of a single matrix–vector product. The applications show that accurate resultscan be obtained for boundary discretizations involving a small number of unknowns. Whenever possible, results are compared with analytical solutions or finite elements.