Advanced absorbing boundaries for elastodynamic finite element analysis: The added degree of freedom method

Abstract

Absorbing boundaries are essential in engineering simulations, especially for elastodynamic problems, to ensure accuracy, reliability and numerical stability. In this paper, the added degree of freedom method (ADM) is developed as a novel approach to address absorbing boundary challenges in finite element analysis. In ADM, additional degrees of freedom (DOFs) are introduced within the absorbing domain to attenuate outgoing elastic waves. For the proposed ADM to implement the absorbing boundary, the stiffness and mass properties of both the added DOFs and conventional DOFs within the absorbing domain are adjusted. This adjustment aims to reduce the propagation speed of elastic waves within the medium, and to prolong the duration of interaction between elastic waves and the surrounding medium. Consequently, the vibrations of nodes can be effectively attenuated by applying damping forces to the added DOFs. The numerical results show that the ADM has the ability to absorb one-dimensional and two-dimensional elastic waves across a broad range of frequencies. Therefore, the proposed ADM offers an innovative solution for modeling absorbing boundaries in various scientific and engineering applications, addressing the challenges of simulating wave propagation within finite computational domains.