A novel hybrid boundary element for polygonal holes with rounded corners in two-dimensional anisotropic elastic solids

A novel hybrid boundary element is developed for polygonal holes in finite anisotropic elastic plates based on two different special fundamental solutions for holes. Since these special fundamental solutions satisfy traction-free condition along the hole's boundary, there is no mesh required on the boundary of polygonal holes. Various types of polygonal holes with rounded corners, such as triangles, rhombuses, ovals, pentagons, are considered by adding proper perturbation to an elliptical hole. The developed hybrid element is a mixture of two special boundary elements: one is based on the special fundamental solution derived through nonconformal mapping and the other is based on the solution derived through perturbation technique with conformal mapping. The special boundary element methods are combined through submodeling technique. First, the global model is solved using the perturbation solution. Then, using the displacements obtained from global model, an auxiliary submodel is set up and the results are evaluated with the nonconformal solution. The present method is compared and validated with conventional boundary element method and finite element method. The effect of hole curvature, material anisotropy, and loading condition on the stress distribution around the hole is presented.