Is BEM a More Efficient Alternative to FEA in Computational Science?

[ramzerimar]

Hello! I'm starting a project with one of my professors at college whose subject is the Boundary Element Method. I've studied a little bit of Finite Element Method, but BEM is new to me. This project will envolve a lot of programming in Python and Matlab.

I would like to know how does BEM compares to FEA. My professor said that BEM takes less computational time because you only have to discretize the boundaries of your problem, and not the whole body (that's what I understood). But looks like BEM is way less widespread than FEA, for example. Ultimately, I would like to learn CFD, and I wonder if learning BEM now would be a good step towards this.

 

[Baluncore]

In the days of slow computers …
BEM can only handle simple isotropic fields. Think black line art.

Now that we have faster numerical processors with much greater storage ...
FEM can handle problems with very complex shapes and fields. Think colour pictures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_element_method#Comparison_to_other_methods

 

[ramzerimar]

In the days of slow computers …
BEM can only handle simple isotropic fields. Think black line art.

Now that we have faster numerical processors with much greater storage ...
FEM can handle problems with very complex shapes and fields. Think colour pictures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_element_method#Comparison_to_other_methods

Well, but probably BEM still has advantage on some fields, right? My professor's research in university is pretty much focused only on BEM.