Hybrid nearly singular integration for isogeometric boundary element analysis of coatings and other thin 2D structures

We present an isogeometric boundary element method (IGABEM) capable of delivering accurate and efficient solutions in the heat transfer analysis of 2D coated structures such as those commonly found in turbomachinery. Although we consider very thin coatings (of thickness down to 10⁻⁷ m), they are modelled explicitly as BEM zones, and this is made possible by the development of a new integration scheme (sinh⁺) aimed particularly at the challenging nearly singular integrals that arise. Sinh⁺ is a hybrid of adaptive and sinh transformation approaches, and we make further extensions to the latter to improve its robustness. The scheme is tuned to deliver results of engineering accuracy in an optimal time. The scheme is adaptable, by changing a tolerance, to enable engineers to achieve a different balance between accuracy and computational efficiency as may be required for different applications. A set of numerical examples demonstrates the ability of the scheme to produce accurate temperature distributions efficiently in the presence of very thin coatings.