“…For example, Shiah and Shi [1] apply the BEM to solve the the heat conduction across an interface crack=defect filled with a thinlayer of interstitial medium between dissimilar anisotropic materials, Paulino and Sutradhar [2] employ the dual BEM with the Galerkin approach for the steady-state heat conduction crack problem, Dobroskok and Linkov [3] use a complex-variable and dual-reciprocity BEM for the thermal potential crack problem, Ekhlakov et al [4] analyze two-dimensional, isotropic, continuously nonhomogeneous and crack functionally graded materials subjected to a thermal shock by means of boundarydomain integral equations, and so on. However, these BEMs, like the direct boundary element method, have their own drawbacks, such as singular integrals, the asymmetric coefficient matrix, the boundary layer effect, and the ''vertex question.''…”