Volume Integral Equation Method (VIEM)

A number of analytical techniques are available for the stress analysis of inclusion problems when the geometries of inclusions are simple (e.g., cylindrical, spherical or ellipsoidal) and when they are well separated [9, 41, 52]. However, these approaches cannot be applied to more general problems where the inclusions are anisotropic and arbitrary in shape, particularly when their concentration is high. Thus, stress analysis of heterogeneous solids or analysis of elastic wave scattering problems in heterogeneous solids often requires the use of numerical techniques based on either the finite element method (FEM) or the boundary integral equation method (BIEM). However, these methods become problematic when dealing with elastostatic problems or elastic wave scattering problems in unbounded media containing anisotropic and/or heterogeneous inclusions of arbitrary shapes. It has been demonstrated that the volume integral equation method (VIEM) can overcome such difficulties in solving a large class of inclusion problems [6,10,20,21,28–30]. One advantage of the VIEM over the BIEM is that it does not require the use of Green’s functions for anisotropic inclusions. Since the elastodynamic Green’s functions for anisotropic media are extremely difficult to calculate, the VIEM offers a clear advantage over the BIEM. In addition, the VIEM is not sensitive to the geometry or concentration of the inclusions. Moreover, in contrast to the finite element method, where the full domain needs to be discretized, the VIEM requires discretization of the inclusions only.