Boundary element method applied to the bending analysis of thin functionally graded plates

The present work introduces the boundary element method applied to the bending analysis of functionally graded plates. It is assumed that material properties are graded through the thickness direction of the plate according to a power law distribution. The neutral surface position for such plate is determined and the classical plate theory based on the exact neutral surface position is employed to extract the equilibrium equations. A direct approach based on the Green's identity is used to formulate boundary element method. By introducing a novel approach, domain integrals which arise from dis...