A fast multipole boundary element method based on the improved Burton–Miller formulation for three-dimensional acoustic problems

A fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) based on the improved Burton–Miller formulation is presented in this paper for solving large-scale three-dimensional (3D) acoustic problems. Some improvements can be made for the developed FMBEM. In order to overcome the non-unique problems of the conventional BEM, the FMBEM employs the improved Burton–Miller formulation developed by the authors recently to solve the exterior acoustic problems for all wave numbers. The improved Burton–Miller formulation contains only weakly singular integrals, and avoids the numerical difficulties associated to the evaluation of the hypersingular integral, it leads to the numerical implementations more efficient and straightforward. In this study, the fast multipole method (FMM) and the preconditioned generalized minimum residual method (GMRES) iterative solver are applied to solve system matrix equation. The block diagonal preconditioner needs no extra memory and no extra CPU time in each matrix–vector product. Thus, the overall computational efficiency of the developed FMBEM is further improved. Numerical examples clearly demonstrate the accuracy, efficiency and applicability of the FMBEM based on improved Burton–Miller formulation for large-scale acoustic problems.     

An adaptive fast multipole boundary element method for three-dimensional acoustic wave problems based on the Burton–Miller formulation

The high solution costs and non-uniqueness difficulties in the boundary element method (BEM) based on the conventional boundary integral equation (CBIE) formulation are two main weaknesses in the BEM for solving exterior acoustic wave problems. To tackle these two weaknesses, an adaptive fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) based on the Burton–Miller formulation for 3-D acoustics is presented in this paper. In this adaptive FMBEM, the Burton–Miller formulation using a linear combination of the CBIE and hypersingular BIE (HBIE) is applied to overcome the non-uniqueness difficulties. The iterative solver generalized minimal residual (GMRES) and fast multipole method (FMM) are adopted to improve the overall computational efficiency. This adaptive FMBEM for acoustics is an extension of the adaptive FMBEM for 3-D potential problems developed by the authors recently. Several examples on large-scale acoustic radiation and scattering problems are presented in this paper which show that the developed adaptive FMBEM can be several times faster than the non-adaptive FMBEM while maintaining the accuracies of the BEM.     

An improved form of the hypersingular boundary integral equation for exterior acoustic problems

An improved form of the hypersingular boundary integral equation (BIE) for acoustic problems is developed in this paper. One popular method for overcoming non-unique problems that occur at characteristic frequencies is the well-known Burton and Miller (1971) method [7], which consists of a linear combination of the Helmholtz equation and its normal derivative equation. The crucial part in implementing this formulation is dealing with the hypersingular integrals. This paper proposes an improved reformulation of the Burton–Miller method and is used to regularize the hypersingular integrals using a new singularity subtraction technique and properties from the associated Laplace equations. It contains only weakly singular integrals and is directly valid for acoustic problems with arbitrary boundary conditions. This work is expected to lead to considerable progress in subsequent developments of the fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) for acoustic problems. Numerical examples of both radiation and scattering problems clearly demonstrate that the improved BIE can provide efficient, accurate, and reliable results for 3-D acoustics.     

A wideband FMBEM for 2D acoustic design sensitivity analysis based on direct differentiation method

This paper presents a wideband fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) for two dimensional acoustic design sensitivity analysis based on the direct differentiation method. The wideband fast multipole method (FMM) formed by combining the original FMM and the diagonal form FMM is used to accelerate the matrix-vector products in the boundary element analysis. The Burton–Miller formulation is used to overcome the fictitious frequency problem when using a single Helmholtz boundary integral equation for exterior boundary-value problems. The strongly singular and hypersingular integrals in the sensitivity equations can be evaluated explicitly and directly by using the piecewise constant discretization. The iterative solver GMRES is applied to accelerate the solution of the linear system of equations. A set of optimal parameters for the wideband FMBEM design sensitivity analysis are obtained by observing the performances of the wideband FMM algorithm in terms of computing time and memory usage. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the efficiency and validity of the proposed algorithm.     

A low-frequency fast multipole boundary element method based on analytical integration of the hypersingular integral for 3D acoustic problems

A low-frequency fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) for 3D acoustic problems is proposed in this paper. The FMBEM adopts the explicit integration of the hypersingular integral in the dual boundary integral equation (BIE) formulation which was developed recently by Matsumoto, Zheng et al. for boundary discretization with constant element. This explicit integration formulation is analytical in nature and cancels out the divergent terms in the limit process. But two types of regular line integrals remain which are usually evaluated numerically using Gaussian quadrature. For these two types of regular line integrals, an accurate and efficient analytical method to evaluate them is developed in the present paper that does not use the Gaussian quadrature. In addition, the numerical instability of the low-frequency FMBEM using the rotation, coaxial translation and rotation back (RCR) decomposing algorithm for higher frequency acoustic problems is reported in this paper. Numerical examples are presented to validate the FMBEM based on the analytical integration of the hypersingular integral. The diagonal form moment which has analytical expression is applied in the upward pass. The improved low-frequency FMBEM delivers an algorithm with efficiency between the low-frequency FMBEM based on the RCR and the diagonal form FMBEM, and can be used for acoustic problems analysis of higher frequency.     

A wideband fast multipole accelerated boundary integral equation method for time‐harmonic elastodynamics in two dimensions

This article presents a wideband fast multipole method (FMM) to accelerate the boundary integral equation method for two‐dimensional elastodynamics in frequency domain. The present wideband FMM is established by coupling the low‐frequency FMM and the high‐frequency FMM that are formulated on the ingenious decomposition of the elastodynamic fundamental solution developed by Nishimura's group. For each of the two FMMs, we estimated the approximation parameters, that is, the expansion order for the low‐frequency FMM and the quadrature order for the high‐frequency FMM according to the requested accuracy, considering the coexistence of the derivatives of the Helmholtz kernels for the longitudinal and transcendental waves in the Burton–Muller type boundary integral equation of interest. In the numerical tests, the error resulting from the fast multipole approximation was monotonically decreased as the requested accuracy level was raised. Also, the computational complexity of the present fast boundary integral equation method agreed with the theory, that is, Nlog N, where N is the number of boundary elements in a series of scattering problems. The present fast boundary integral equation method is promising for simulations of the elastic systems with subwavelength structures. As an example, the wave propagation along a waveguide fabricated in a finite‐size phononic crystal was demonstrated. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new fast multipole boundary element method for solving large‐scale two‐dimensional elastostatic problems

A new fast multipole boundary element method (BEM) is presented in this paper for large‐scale analysis of two‐dimensional (2‐D) elastostatic problems based on the direct boundary integral equation (BIE) formulation. In this new formulation, the fundamental solution for 2‐D elasticity is written in a complex form using the two complex potential functions in 2‐D elasticity. In this way, the multipole and local expansions for 2‐D elasticity BIE are directly linked to those for 2‐D potential problems. Furthermore, their translations (moment to moment, moment to local, and local to local) turn out to be exactly the same as those in the 2‐D potential case. This formulation is thus very compact and more efficient than other fast multipole approaches for 2‐D elastostatic problems using Taylor series expansions of the fundamental solution in its original form. Several numerical examples are presented to study the accuracy and efficiency of the developed fast multipole BEM formulation and code. BEM models with more than one million equations have been solved successfully on a laptop computer. These results clearly demonstrate the potential of the developed fast multipole BEM for solving large‐scale 2‐D elastostatic problems. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于有限元与宽频快速多极边界元的二维流固耦合声场分析

采用有限元/快速多极边界元法进行水下弹性结构的辐射和散射声场分析。Burton-Miller法用于解决传统单Helmholtz边界积分方程在求解外边界值问题时出现的非唯一解的问题。该文采用GMRES和快速多极算法加速求解系统方程。针对传统快速算法在高频处效率低和对角式快速算法在低频处不稳定这一问题,该文通过结合这两种快速算法形成宽频快速算法来克服。同时该文通过观察不同参数条件设置下,宽频快速多极法得到的数值结果在计算精度和计算时间上的变化,得到最优的参数组合值。最后通过数值算例验证该文算法的正确性和有效性。     

A fast multipole boundary element method for 3D multi-domain acoustic scattering problems based on the Burton-Miller formulation

A fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) for 3D multi-domain acoustic scattering problems based on the Burton-Miller formulation is presented in this paper. A multi-tree structure is designed for the multi-domain FMBEM. It results in mismatch of leaves and well separate cells definition in different domains and complicates the implementation of the algorithm, especially for preconditioning. A preconditioner based on boundary blocks is devised for the multi-domain FMBEM and its efficiency in reducing the number of iterations in solving large-scale multi-domain scattering problems is demonstrated. In addition to the analytical moment, another method, based on the anti-symmetry of the moment kernel, is developed to reduce the moment computation further by a factor of two. Frequency sweep analysis of a penetrable sphere shows that the multi-domain FMBEM based on the Burton-Miller formulation can overcome the non-unique solution problem at the fictitious eigenfrequencies. Several other numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the developed multi-domain FMBEM for acoustic problems. In spite of the high cost of memory and CPU time for the multi-tree structure in the multi-domain FMBEM, a large BEM model studied with a PC has 0.3 million elements corresponding to 0.6 million unknowns, which clearly shows the potential of the developed FMBEM in solving large-scale multi-domain acoustics problems.     

A dual BIE approach for large‐scale modelling of 3‐D electrostatic problems with the fast multipole boundary element method

A dual boundary integral equation (BIE) formulation is presented for the analysis of general 3‐D electrostatic problems, especially those involving thin structures. This dual BIE formulation uses a linear combination of the conventional BIE and hypersingular BIE on the entire boundary of a problem domain. Similar to crack problems in elasticity, the conventional BIE degenerates when the field outside a thin body is investigated, such as the electrostatic field around a thin conducting plate. The dual BIE formulation, however, does not degenerate in such cases. Most importantly, the dual BIE is found to have better conditioning for the equations using the boundary element method (BEM) compared with the conventional BIE, even for domains with regular shapes. Thus the dual BIE is well suited for implementation with the fast multipole BEM. The fast multipole BEM for the dual BIE formulation is developed based on an adaptive fast multiple approach for the conventional BIE. Several examples are studied with the fast multipole BEM code, including finite and infinite domain problems, bulky and thin plate structures, and simplified comb‐drive models having more than 440 thin beams with the total number of equations above 1.45 million and solved on a PC. The numerical results clearly demonstrate that the dual BIE is very effective in solving general 3‐D electrostatic problems, as well as special cases involving thin perfect conducting structures, and that the adaptive fast multipole BEM with the dual BIE formulation is very efficient and promising in solving large‐scale electrostatic problems. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Adaptive Fast Multipole Boundary Element Method for Three-dimensional Potential Problems

An adaptive fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) for general three-dimensional (3-D) potential problems is presented in this paper. This adaptive FMBEM uses an adaptive tree structure that can balance the multipole to local translations (M2L) and the direct evaluations of the near-field integrals, and thus can reduce the number of the more costly direct evaluations. Furthermore, the coefficients used in the preconditioner for the iterative solver (GMRES) are stored and used repeatedly in the direct evaluations of the near-field contributions. In this way, the computational efficiency of the adaptive FMBEM is improved significantly. The adaptive FMBEM can be applied to both the original FMBEM formulation and the new FMBEM with diagonal translations. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the adaptive FMBEM for studying large-scale 3-D potential problems. The adaptive FMBEM is found to be about 50% faster than the non-adaptive version of the new FMBEM in solving the model (with 558,000 elements) for porous materials studied in this paper. The computational efficiencies and accuracies of the FMBEM as compared with the finite element method (FEM) are also studied using a heat-sink model. It is found that the adaptive FMBEM is especially advantageous in modeling problems with complicated domains for which free meshes with much more finite elements would be needed with the FEM.     

An immersed finite element method with integral equation correction

We propose a robust immersed finite element method in which an integral equation formulation is used to enforce essential boundary conditions. The solution of a boundary value problem is expressed as the superposition of a finite element solution and an integral equation solution. For computing the finite element solution, the physical domain is embedded into a slightly larger Cartesian (box‐shaped) domain and is discretized using a block‐structured mesh. The defect in the essential boundary conditions, which occurs along the physical domain boundaries, is subsequently corrected with an integral equation method. In order to facilitate the mapping between the finite element and integral equation solutions, the physical domain boundary is represented with a signed distance function on the block‐structured mesh. As a result, only a boundary mesh of the physical domain is necessary and no domain mesh needs to be generated, except for the non‐boundary‐conforming block‐structured mesh. The overall approach is first presented for the Poisson equation and then generalized to incompressible viscous flow equations. As an example of fluid–structure coupling, the settling of a heavy rigid particle in a closed tank is considered. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparison of techniques for overcoming non‐uniqueness of boundary integral equations for the collocation partition of unity method in two‐dimensional acoustic scattering

The Partition of Unity Method has become an attractive approach for extending the allowable frequency range for wave simulations beyond that available using piecewise polynomial elements. The non‐uniqueness of solution obtained from the conventional boundary integral equation (CBIE) is well known. The CBIE derived through Green's identities suffers from a problem of non‐uniqueness at certain characteristic frequencies. Two of the standard methods of overcoming this problem are the so‐called Combined Helmholtz Integral Equation Formulation (CHIEF) method and that of Burton and Miller. The latter method introduces a hypersingular integral, which may be treated in various ways. In this paper, we present the collocation partition of unity boundary element method (PUBEM) for the Helmholtz problem and compare the performance of CHIEF against a Burton–Miller formulation regularised using the approach of Li and Huang. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The development of the pFFT accelerated BEM for 3-D acoustic scattering problems based on the Burton and Miller's integral formulation

The precorrected-FFT acceleration technique is successfully applied in the boundary element method for the simulation of 3-D acoustic scattering problems. The composite Helmholtz integral equation presented by Burton and Miller is employed to overcome the nonuniqueness problem occurring in the simulation of exterior acoustic problems by the boundary element method. Since the triangular constant element is employed, the hypersingular boundary integral equation is reduced into a weakly singular boundary integral equation with the application of a modified Burton and Miller's formulation. The computational cost, the consumed memory and the convergence of the current method are demonstrated and analyzed through the simulation of a plane acoustic wave scattering from a rigid sphere and from an axisymmetrical rigid structure.     

Modelling the transient interaction of a thin elastic shell with an exterior acoustic field

Coupled finite and boundary element methods for solving transient fluid–structure interaction problems are developed. The finite element method is used to model the radiating structure, and the boundary element method (BEM) is used to determine the resulting acoustic field. The well‐known stability problems of time domain BEMs are avoided by using a Burton–Miller‐type integral equation. The stability, accuracy and efficiency of two alternative solution methods are compared using an exact solution for the case of a thin spherical elastic shell. The convergence properties of the preferred solution method are then investigated more thoroughly. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Coupled FE–BE method for eigenvalue analysis of elastic structures submerged in an infinite fluid domain

For thin elastic structures submerged in heavy fluid, e.g., water, a strong interaction between the structural domain and the fluid domain occurs and significantly alters the eigenfrequencies. Therefore, the eigenanalysis of the fluid–structure interaction system is necessary. In this paper, a coupled finite element and boundary element (FE–BE) method is developed for the numerical eigenanalysis of the fluid–structure interaction problems. The structure is modeled by the finite element method. The compressibility of the fluid is taken into consideration, and hence the Helmholtz equation is employed as the governing equation and solved by the boundary element method (BEM). The resulting nonlinear eigenvalue problem is converted into a small linear one by applying a contour integral method. Adequate modifications are suggested to improve the efficiency of the contour integral method and avoid missing the eigenvalues of interest. The Burton–Miller formulation is applied to tackle the fictitious eigenfrequency problem of the BEM, and the optimal choice of its coupling parameter is investigated for the coupled FE–BE method. Numerical examples are given and discussed to demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of the developed FE–BE method. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A fast multipole boundary element method for solving the thin plate bending problem

A fast multipole boundary element method (BEM) for solving large-scale thin plate bending problems is presented in this paper. The method is based on the Kirchhoff thin plate bending theory and the biharmonic equation governing the deflection of the plate. First, the direct boundary integral equations and the conventional BEM for thin plate bending problems are reviewed. Second, the complex notation of the kernel functions, expansions and translations in the fast multipole BEM are presented. Finally, a few numerical examples are presented to show the accuracy and efficiency of the fast multipole BEM in solving thin plate bending problems. The bending rigidity of a perforated plate is evaluated using the developed code. It is shown that the fast multipole BEM can be applied to solve plate bending problems with good accuracy. Possible improvements in the efficiency of the method are discussed.     

Analytical integration of the moments in the diagonal form fast multipole boundary element method for 3-D acoustic wave problems

A diagonal form fast multipole boundary element method (BEM) is presented in this paper for solving 3-D acoustic wave problems based on the Burton-Miller boundary integral equation (BIE) formulation. Analytical expressions of the moments in the diagonal fast multipole BEM are derived for constant elements, which are shown to be more accurate, stable and efficient than those using direct numerical integration. Numerical examples show that using the analytical moments can reduce the CPU time by a lot as compared with that using the direct numerical integration. The percentage of CPU time reduction largely depends on the proportion of the time used for moments calculation to the overall solution time. Several examples are studied to investigate the effectiveness and efficiency of the developed diagonal fast multipole BEM as compared with earlier p³ fast multipole method BEM, including a scattering problem of a dolphin modeled with 404,422 boundary elements and a radiation problem of a train wheel track modeled with 257,972 elements. These realistic, large-scale BEM models clearly demonstrate the effectiveness, efficiency and potential of the developed diagonal form fast multipole BEM for solving large-scale acoustic wave problems.     

A fast multipole boundary element method for solving two-dimensional thermoelasticity problems

A fast multipole boundary element method (BEM) for solving general uncoupled steady-state thermoelasticity problems in two dimensions is presented in this paper. The fast multipole BEM is developed to handle the thermal term in the thermoelasticity boundary integral equation involving temperature and heat flux distributions on the boundary of the problem domain. Fast multipole expansions, local expansions and related translations for the thermal term are derived using complex variables. Several numerical examples are presented to show the accuracy and effectiveness of the developed fast multipole BEM in calculating the displacement and stress fields for 2-D elastic bodies under various thermal loads, including thin structure domains that are difficult to mesh using the finite element method (FEM). The BEM results using constant elements are found to be accurate compared with the analytical solutions, and the accuracy of the BEM results is found to be comparable to that of the FEM with linear elements. In addition, the BEM offers the ease of use in generating the mesh for a thin structure domain or a domain with complicated geometry, such as a perforated plate with randomly distributed holes for which the FEM fails to provide an adequate mesh. These results clearly demonstrate the potential of the developed fast multipole BEM for solving 2-D thermoelasticity problems.     

Quasi-static analysis of viscoplastic plates by the boundary element method

A direct boundary element method (BEM) is developed for the determination of the time-dependent inelastic deflection of plates of arbitrary planform and under arbitrary boundary conditions to general lateral loading history. The governing differential equation is the nonhomogeneous biharmonic equation for the rate of small transverse deflection. The boundary integral formulation is derived by using a combination of the BEM and finite element methodology. The plate material is modelled as elastic-viscoplastic. Numerical examples for sample problems are presented to illustrate the method and to demonstrate its merits.