Singular boundary method for steady-state heat conduction in three dimensional general anisotropic media

The singular boundary method (SBM) is a recent strong-form meshless boundary collocation method. Like the method of fundamental solutions (MFS), the SBM uses the fundamental solution of the governing differential equation of interest as the basis function and is mathematically simple, truly meshless, accurate, and easy-to-program. Unlike the MFS, the SBM, however, uses the concept of the origin intensity factor to isolate the singularity of the fundamental solutions and overcomes the fictitious boundary issue which has long perplexed the MFS. This study makes the first attempt to apply the SBM to steady-state heat conduction in three-dimensional (3D) anisotropic materials. Five benchmark numerical examples demonstrate that the SBM is accurate, convergent, stable, and computationally efficient in solving this kind of problems. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.