Stress analysis by BEM of axisymmetric vessels and pipes subjected to arbitrary distributed loads

Abstract This paper presents a boundary element method (BEM) implementation for calculation of the local stress and stress concentration factors (SCF) of axisymmetric vessels and pipes subjected to arbitrary distributed loads. The problem is divided into a number of Fourier series along the tangential coordinate. Each term of the series produces displacement and stress in the same Fourier mode. The numerical results show this method has high computational efficiency for computing the local stresses and a few modes are enough for a solution with sufficicient accuracy for most purposes.