In the direct formulation of the boundary element
method (BEM), a volume integral arises in the resulting inte-gral equation if thermal effects are present. The steps to trans-form this volume integral into boundary ones in an exact ana-lytical manner are reviewed in this paper for two- dimensional
anisotropic thermoelasticity. The general applicability of the
BEM algorithm for fracture mechanics applications is demon-strated by three crack problems with slanted cracks.