One of the most interesting developments in engineering analysis during the last few years has been the rapid growth of boundary element methods. The first and second international conferences on this topic held in 1978 and 1980 attracted approximately 30 papers each, most of them from a few well known groups around the world. The third meeting in 1981, produced instead approximately 40 papers, many of them from young investigators working in newly created research groups. They have been attracted to boundary elements by the many advantages of the technique and were able to assimilate...