This Festschrift is a collection of articles contributed by colleagues, collaborators and past students to honor Professor John T. Katsikadelis on the occasion of his 70 years. Professor Katsikadelis, now an emeritus professor at the National Technical University of Athens in Greece, is one of the BEM pioneers who started his research in this field with his PhD thesis at the Polytechnic Institute of New York in the 1970s and continued it to date.The book comprises 26 contributions by more than 50 leading researchers in Boundary Element Methods (BEM) and other Mesh Reduction Methods (MRM). All contributors are well-known scientists from Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America. The volume is essentially a collection of both original and review articles covering a variety of research topics in the areas of solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, potential theory, composite materials, fracture mechanics, damage mechanics, plasticity, heat transfer, dynamics and vibrations and soil-structure interaction. Invaluable to scientists, engineers and other professionals interested in the latest developments of the boundary integral equation methods, it addresses the needs of the BEM computational mechanics research community.The book is written for: researchers in academia and industry and graduate students focusing on solid and fluid mechanics as used in civil, mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Over the past decades, the Boundary Element Method has emerged as a ver satile and powerful tool for the solution of engineering problems, presenting in many cases an alternative to the more widely used Finite Element Method. As with any numerical method, the engineer or scientist who applies it to a practical problem needs to be acquainted with, and understand, its basic principles to be able to apply it correctly and be aware of its limitations. It is with this intention that we have endeavoured to write this book: to give the student or practitioner an easy-to-understand introductory course to the method so as to enable him or her to apply it judiciously. As the title suggests, this book not only serves as an introductory course, but also cov ers some advanced topics that we consider important for the researcher who needs to be up-to-date with new developments. This book is the result of our teaching experiences with the Boundary Element Method, along with research and consulting activities carried out in the field. Its roots lie in a graduate course on the Boundary Element Method given by the authors at the university of Stuttgart. The experiences gained from teaching and the remarks and questions of the students have contributed to shaping the 'Introductory course' (Chapters 1-8) to the needs of the stu dents without assuming a background in numerical methods in general or the Boundary Element Method in particular.

Nine detailed survey chapters by different authors present a number of applications of BEMs.

Modern finite element analysis has grown into a basic mathematical tool for almost every field of engineering and the applied sciences. This introductory textbook fills a gap in the literature, offering a concise, integrated presentation of methods, applications, software tools, and hands-on projects. Included are numerous exercises, problems, and Mathematica/Matlab-based programming projects. The emphasis is on interdisciplinary applications to serve a broad audience of advanced undergraduate/graduate students with different backgrounds in applied mathematics, engineering, physics/geophysics. The work may also serve as a self-study reference for researchers and practitioners seeking a quick introduction to the subject for their research.

This volume, dedicated to Professor Dimitri Beskos, contains contributions from leading researchers in Europe, the USA, Japan and elsewhere, and addresses the needs of the computational mechanics research community in terms of timely information on boundary integral equation-based methods and techniques applied to a variety of fields. The contributors are well-known scientists, who also happen to be friends, collaborators as past students of Dimitri Beskos. Dimitri is one the BEM pioneers who started his career at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, USA, in the 1970s and is now with the University of Patras in Patras, Greece. The book is essentially a collection of both original and review articles on contemporary Boundary Element Methods (BEM) as well as on the newer Mesh Reduction Methods (MRM), covering a variety of research topics. Close to forty contributions compose an over-500 page volume that is rich in detail and wide in terms of breadth of coverage of the subject of integral equation formulations and solutions in both solid and fluid mechanics.