Development of the fundamental BEM solution for half space-near surface excavations

The present paper has adopted the Mindlin solution and Melan solution for the plane strain case and then applied these to the use of a two dimensional boundary element formulation using direct integration for a constant stress element. The results are compared with those of the Kelvm solution to the same problem using the same element approximation. It is the purpose of the paper to highlight the usefulness of the Mindlin and Melan solutions for this class of problem.