Preface

This special issue contains papers selected from the 40th International Conference on Boundary Elements and other Mesh Reduction Methods, held in the New Forest, UK, organised by the Wessex Institute. 

The annual conference on Boundary Elements and other Mesh Reduction Methods (BEM/MRM) started in 1978 and is now in its 40th version.  It is well established as the recognised international forum for the latest advances in those techniques and their application in science and engineering.

The continued success of the meeting is a result of the strength of the research on boundary elements and mesh reduction techniques being carried out all over the world.  The conference has continually evolved in line with the latest developments in the field since the successful development of boundary integral techniques into BEM was reported in the first meeting held in Southampton in 1978.

The objective of the research papers presented at the meetings is the further development of techniques that reduce or eliminate the type of meshes required by first generation computational methods, such as finite differences or finite elements.

This has steadily been achieved through the development of BEM as a computational tool and continues through more recent research into advanced techniques, leading to further mesh reduction aiming to produce truly meshless methods.

Also included are papers on the use of BEM and, in particular, the description of new applications.  

The Editors would like to thank all authors for the quality of their papers and other colleagues for their help in reviewing the material.  

The Editors 

2017