Introduction

The conference on Boundary Elements and other Mesh Reduction Methods (BEM/MRM) is recognised as the international forum for the latest advances of these methods and their applications in science and engineering.

The success of the meeting, since the first conference took place in Southampton, UK, in 1978, is an indication of the strength of the research being carried out by many different groups around the world.

This continuous growth is a result of the evolution of the techniques from methods based on classical integral equations to techniques now covering a wide variety of mathematical approaches, the main objective of which is to reduce or eliminate the mesh. The mesh, a concept inherited from more primitive methods, such as finite differences and finite elements, is alien to the solution of the problem and dictated only by the limitations of first generation analysis techniques.

Since its beginning in 1978, the conference has been successfully held each year and has produced a large number of volumes in which practically all main innovations in mesh reduction methods have been reported.

The latest of these volumes, from 1993 onwards, are now incorporated in the Wessex Institute eLibrary (http://library.witpress.com) where the papers are available to the community.