Stable and efficient FEM-BEM coupling with OSRC regularisation for acoustic wave transmission

The finite element method (FEM) and the boundary element method (BEM) can numerically solve the Helmholtz system for acoustic wave propagation. When an object with heterogeneous wave speed or density is embedded in an unbounded exterior medium, the coupled FEM-BEM algorithm promises to combine the strengths of each technique. The FEM handles the heterogeneous regions while the BEM models the homogeneous exterior. Even though standard FEM-BEM algorithms are effective, they do require stabilisation at resonance frequencies. One such approach is to add a regularisation term to the system of equations. This algorithm is stable at all frequencies but also brings higher computational costs. This study proposes a regulariser based on the on-surface radiation conditions (OSRC). The OSRC operators are also used to precondition the boundary integral operators and combined with incomplete LU factorisations for the volumetric weak formulation. The proposed preconditioning strategy improves the convergence of iterative linear solvers significantly, especially at higher frequencies. (C) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The finite element method (FEM) and the boundary element method (BEM) can numerically solve the Helmholtz system for acoustic wave propagation. The coupled FEM-BEM algorithm combines the strengths of each technique, handling heterogeneous regions with FEM and modeling homogeneous exterior with BEM. This study proposes a regulariser based on the on-surface radiation conditions to improve the convergence of iterative linear solvers significantly.