boosted the development of computational methods and their application in engi-
neering and in the analysis and design of structures, which extend from bridges to

aircrafts and from machine elements to tunnels and the human body. New scientific

subfields were generated in all engineering disciplines being described as “Compu-
tational”, e.g. Computational Mechanics, Computational Fluid Mechanics, Com-
putational Structural Analysis, Computational Structural Dynamics etc. The Finite

Element Method (FEM) and the Boundary Element Method (BEM) are the most
popular of the computational methods. While the FEM has been long established
and is most well known in the engineering community, the BEM appeared later
offering new computational capabilities with its effectiveness, accuracy and low
computational cost.