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.     

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.     

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.     

An adaptive fast multipole boundary face method with higher order elements for acoustic problems in three-dimension

An adaptive fast multipole boundary face method using higher order elements based on the well-known Burton-Miller equation is presented in this paper for solving the large-scale three-dimensional exterior acoustic wave problems. The fast multipole boundary face method is referred to as FMBFM. In the FMBFM, the boundary integration and field variables approximation are both performed in the parametric space of each boundary face exactly the same as the B-rep data structure in standard solid modeling packages. In this FMBFM, higher order elements are employed to improve the computational accuracy and efficiency, and an adaptive tree structure is constructed to improve the efficiency of the FMBFM. Numerical examples for large-scale acoustic radiation and scattering problems in this paper demonstrated the accuracy, efficiency and validity of the adaptive FMBFM. Comparison study showed that the FMBFM with high order elements out-performs the FMBFM with constant elements respect to accuracy and CPU time at the same number of the nodes. In addition, the CAD models, even with complicated geometry, are directly converted into the FMBFM models, thus the present method provides a new way toward automatic simulation.     

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.     

A fast multipole boundary element method for 2D multi-domain elastostatic problems based on a dual BIE formulation

A new fast multipole formulation for the hypersingular BIE (HBIE) for 2D elasticity is presented in this paper based on a complex-variable representation of the kernels, similar to the formulation developed earlier for the conventional BIE (CBIE). A dual BIE formulation using a linear combination of the developed CBIE and HBIE is applied to analyze multi-domain problems with thin inclusions or open cracks. Two pre-conditioners for the fast multipole boundary element method (BEM) are devised and their effectiveness and efficiencies in solving large-scale problems are discussed. Several numerical examples are presented to study the accuracy and efficiency of the developed fast multipole BEM using the dual BIE formulation. The numerical results clearly demonstrate the potentials of the fast multipole BEM for solving large-scale 2D multi-domain elasticity problems. The method can be applied to study composite materials, functionally-graded materials, and micro-electro-mechanical-systems with coupled fields, all of which often involve thin shapes or thin inclusions.     

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.     

The fast multipole boundary element method for potential problems: A tutorial

The fast multipole method (FMM) has been regarded as one of the top 10 algorithms in scientific computing that were developed in the 20th century. Combined with the FMM, the boundary element method (BEM) can now solve large-scale problems with several million degrees of freedom on a desktop computer within hours. This opened up a wide range of applications for the BEM that has been hindered for many years by the lack of efficiencies in the solution process, although it has been regarded as superb in the modeling stage. However, understanding the fast multipole BEM is even more difficult as compared with the conventional BEM, because of the added complexities and different approaches in both FMM formulations and implementations. This paper is an introduction to the fast multipole BEM for potential problems, which is aimed to overcome this hurdle for people who are familiar with the conventional BEM and want to learn and adopt the fast multipole approach. The basic concept and main procedures in the FMM for solving boundary integral equations are described in detail using the 2D potential problem as an example. The structure of a fast multipole BEM program is presented and the source code is also made available that can help the development of fast multipole BEM codes for solving other problems. Numerical examples are presented to further demonstrate the efficiency, accuracy and potentials of the fast multipole BEM for solving large-scale problems.     

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.     

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.     

激光干涉仪反射镜三维温度场的快速多极边界元分析

温差造成光刻机激光干涉仪反射镜热变形,从而影响光刻机的精度。该文将基于二次单元的快速边界元法用于激光干涉仪反射镜的大规模温度场模拟。不连续单元的引入可以有效处理角点问题;新型快速多极算法用于边界元法的加速求解。建立统一的二次单元多极展开格式以处理混合边界。数值算例分析了快速多极边界元法的计算精度和效率,并和常规算法比较;使用该算法对激光干涉仪反射镜进行了大规模温度场计算,并和有限元法比较。结果表明:基于二次单元的快速多极边界元法可以高精度求解大规模三维传热问题。     

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.     

hp Fast multipole boundary element method for 3D acoustics

A fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) extended by an adaptive mesh refinement algorithm for solving acoustic problems in three‐dimensional space is presented in this paper. The Collocation method is used, and the Burton–Miller formulation is employed to overcome the fictitious eigenfrequencies arising for exterior domain problems. Because of the application of the combined integral equation, the developed FMBEM is feasible for all positive wave numbers even up to high frequencies. In order to evaluate the hypersingular integral resulting from the Burton–Miller formulation of the boundary integral equation, an integration technique for arbitrary element order is applied. The fast multipole method combined with an arbitrary order h‐p mesh refinement strategy enables accurate computation of large‐scale systems. Numerical examples substantiate the high accuracy attainable by the developed FMBEM, while requiring only moderate computational effort at the same time. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dual BIE approaches for modeling electrostatic MEMS problems with thin beams and accelerated by the fast multipole method

Three boundary integral equation (BIE) formulations are investigated for the analysis of electrostatic fields exterior to thin-beam structures as found in some micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). The three BIE formulations are: (1) the regular BIE using only the single-layer potential; (2) the dual BIE (a) using the regular BIE on one surface of a beam and the gradient BIE on the other surface; and (3) the dual BIE (b) using a linear combination of the regular BIE and gradient BIE on all the surfaces of the beam. Similar to crack problems in elasticity, the regular BIE degenerates when the beam thickness tends to zero, while the two dual BIE formulations do not degenerate. Most importantly, the dual BIE (b) is found to be well conditioned for all the values of the beam thickness, and thus well suited for implementation with the fast multipole BEM. The fast multipole BEM for both the regular BIE and the dual BIE (b) formulations are developed and tested on a simplified comb-drive model. The numerical results clearly show that the dual BIEs are very effective in solving MEMS problems with thin beams and the fast multipole BEM with the dual BIE (b) formulation is very efficient in solving large-scale MEMS models.     

A coupled ES-FEM/BEM method for fluid–structure interaction problems

The edge-based smoothed finite element method (ES-FEM) developed recently shows some excellent features in solving solid mechanics problems using triangular mesh. In this paper, a coupled ES-FEM/BEM method is proposed to analyze acoustic fluid–structure interaction problems, where the ES-FEM is used to model the structure, while the acoustic fluid is represented by boundary element method (BEM). Three-node triangular elements are used to discretize the structural and acoustic fluid domains for the important adaptability to complicated geometries. The smoothed Galerkin weak form is adopted to formulate the discretized equations for the structure, and the gradient smoothing operation is applied over the edge-based smoothing domains. The global equations of acoustic fluid–structure interaction problems are then established by coupling the ES-FEM for the structure and the BEM for the fluid. The gradient smoothing technique applied in the structural domain can provide the important and right amount of softening effects to the “overly-stiff” FEM model and thus improve the accuracy of the solutions of coupled system. Numerical examples of acoustic fluid–structure interaction problems have been used to assess the present formulation, and the results show that the accuracy of present method is very good and even higher than those obtained using the coupled FEM/BEM with quadrilateral mesh.     

Fast single domain–subdomain BEM algorithm for 3D incompressible fluid flow and heat transfer

In this paper acceleration and computer memory reduction of an algorithm for the simulation of laminar viscous flows and heat transfer is presented. The algorithm solves the velocity–vorticity formulation of the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations in 3D. It is based on a combination of a subdomain boundary element method (BEM) and single domain BEM. The CPU time and storage requirements of the single domain BEM are reduced by implementing a fast multipole expansion method. The Laplace fundamental solution, which is used as a special weighting function in BEM, is expanded in terms of spherical harmonics. The computational domain and its boundary are recursively cut up forming a tree of clusters of boundary elements and domain cells. Data sparse representation is used in parts of the matrix, which correspond to boundary‐domain clusters pairs that are admissible for expansion. Significant reduction of the complexity is achieved. The paper presents results of testing of the multipole expansion algorithm by exploring its effect on the accuracy of the solution and its influence on the non‐linear convergence properties of the solver. Two 3D benchmark numerical examples are used: the lid‐driven cavity and the onset of natural convection in a differentially heated enclosure. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A wideband fast multipole boundary element method for three dimensional acoustic shape sensitivity analysis based on direct differentiation method

This paper presents a wideband fast multipole boundary element approach for three dimensional acoustic shape sensitivity analysis. The Burton-Miller method is adopted to tackle the fictitious eigenfrequency problem associated with the conventional boundary integral equation method in solving exterior acoustic wave problems. The sensitivity boundary integral equations are obtained by the direct differentiation method, and the concept of material derivative is used in the derivation. The iterative solver generalized minimal residual method (GMRES) and the wideband fast multipole method are employed to improve the overall computational efficiency. Several numerical examples are given to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the present method.     

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.     

The hybrid boundary node method accelerated by fast multipole expansion technique for 3D potential problems

This paper presents a fast formulation of the hybrid boundary node method (Hybrid BNM) for solving problems governed by Laplace's equation in 3D. The preconditioned GMRES is employed for solving the resulting system of equations. At each iteration step of the GMRES, the matrix–vector multiplication is accelerated by the fast multipole method. Green's kernel function is expanded in terms of spherical harmonic series. An oct‐tree data structure is used to hierarchically subdivide the computational domain into well‐separated cells and to invoke the multipole expansion approximation. Formulations for the local and multipole expansions, and also conversion of multipole to local expansion are given. And a binary tree data structure is applied to accelerate the moving least square approximation on surfaces. All the formulations are implemented in a computer code written in C++. Numerical examples demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

二维层状地基波阻板隔振分析

为了研究层状地基中波阻板的隔振效果，基于薄层法在研究层状介质中波的传播问题的高效性、边界单元法处理无限域问题的精确性，结合两种方法的优点，本文采用以薄层法层状半空间基本解答作为格林函数的边界元法，分别对上软下硬和上硬下软两种层状半空间地基中波阻板的隔振效果进行分析。研究表明：增加波阻板的厚度、提高波阻板的弹性模量可以显著提高隔振效果；分层土体厚度和土性对于水平和竖向的位移振幅衰减系数有较大影响。