An overlapping domain decomposition approach for coupling the finite and boundary element methods

An overlapping iterative domain decomposition approach for the coupling of the finite element method (FEM) and the boundary element method (BEM) is presented in this paper. In this proposed method, the domain of the original problem is subdivided into a FEM sub-domain and a BEM sub-domain, such that the two sub-domains partially overlap over a common region. The common region is modeled by both methods. A brief discussion on the existing iterative coupling methods and their limitations are given in the first part of this paper. In the second part, the proposed overlapping method is described and the convergence conditions are presented. Two numerical examples are given to demonstrate the capability of the proposed method for handling cases where the Neumann boundary conditions are specified on the entire external boundary of the FEM or BEM sub-domains.