AN ADVANCED BOUNDARY ELEMENT FORMULATION FOR ACOUSTIC RADIATION AND SCATTERING IN THREE DIMENSIONS

A computational method is presented for determining acoustic fields produced by arbitrary shaped three-dimensional bodies. The formulation includes both radiation and scattering problems. In particular an isoparametric element formulation is introduced in which both the surface geometry and the acoustic variables on the surface of the body are represented by second order shape functions within the local coordinate system. A general result for the surface velocity potential and the exterior field is derived. This result is applicable to non-smooth bodies, i.e. it includes the case where the surface may have a non-unique normal (e.g. at the edge of a cube). Test cases are shown involving spherical, cylindrical and cubical geometry for both radiation and scattering problems.;A special formulation involving axisymmetric bodies and boundary conditions is also presented. For this special case, the surface integrals are reduced to line integrals and an integral over the angle of revolution. The integration over the angle is performed partly analytically in terms of elliptic integrals and partly numerically using simple Gaussian quadrature formula. Since the rest of the integrals involve only line integrals along the generator of the body, any discretization scheme can be easily obtained to achieve a desired degree of accuracy in evaluating these integrals.;The present formulation is also extended to include half-space problems in which the effect of the reflected wave from an infinite plane is taken into account. By selecting an appropriate Green's function, the surface integral over the plane is nullified; thus all the computational efforts can be performed only on the radiating or scattering body at issue and thereby greatly simplify the solution.