An optimized finite element method for the analysis of 3D acoustic cavities with impedance boundary conditions

Abstract

Numerical approaches studying the reduction of dispersion error for acoustic problems so far have focused on the models without impedance. Whereas, the practical acoustic problems usually involve impedance. This situation indicates that it is essential to study the numerical methods by taking into account the influence of impedance. In this work, an optimized finite element method is introduced to solve the three-dimensional steady-state acoustic problems with impedance. This technique resorts to heuristic optimization techniques to determine the integration points locations in elements. It develops a strategy to optimize the integration points locations, and makes use of adaptive genetic algorithm to achieve the best integration points locations for the construction of element matrix. By using the proposed method, a three-dimensional acoustic tube model with impedance is investigated, and the dispersion error, accuracy, convergence and efficiency of solutions are all compared to those of some existing numerical methods and reference solutions. Simultaneously, two practical cavity models are studied to verify the effectiveness and strongpoints of the proposed method as compared to existing numerical methods. Hence, the proposed method can be more widely applied to solve practical acoustic problems, yielding more accurate solutions.