A kernel-independent fast multipole BEM for large-scale elastodynamic analysis

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an easy-to-implement and accurate fast boundary element method (BEM) for solving large-scale elastodynamic problems in frequency and time domains. Design/methodology/approach – A newly developed kernel-independent fast multipole method (KIFMM) is applied to accelerating the evaluation of displacements, strains and stresses in frequency domain elastodynamic BEM analysis, in which the far-field interactions are evaluated efficiently utilizing equivalent densities and check potentials. Although there are six boundary integrals with unique kernel functions, by using the elastic theory, the authors managed to accelerate these six boundary integrals by KIFMM with the same kind of equivalent densities and check potentials. The boundary integral equations are discretized by Nystrom method with curved quadratic elements. The method is further used to conduct the time-domain analysis by using the frequency-domain approach. Findings – Numerical results show that by t...