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

Abstract 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.