Inelastic 2D analysis by adaptive iterative BEM–FEM coupling procedures

•Efficient and versatile BEM–FEM coupling procedures are discussed.•Nonlinear and non-matching adaptive analyses are considered.•Optimized and unified iterative approaches are employed. In this work, two iterative BEM–FEM coupling procedures are discussed, taking into account nonlinear models and adaptive spatial discretizations. In both procedures, optimal relaxation parameters are computed (speeding up the convergence of the iterative coupling) and non-matching discretizations at common interfaces are allowed (enabling more versatile adaptive approaches). A single unified iterative loop is considered in order to deal with all the focused iterative solutions simultaneously (i.e., nonlinear analysis, adaptive analysis and coupling analysis), rendering a very efficient methodology. At the end of the paper, numerical results are presented, illustrating the good performance of the proposed technique.