The equivalent source method is an indirect boundary element method with an implicit Voronoi mesh

Abstract

The Equivalent Source Method (ESM) consists of modeling the acoustical field radiated or scattered from an object by a set of radiating monopole sources located below its surface. While highly efficient for modeling the scattered field by a smooth object, ESM becomes less effective in representing acoustic diffraction from sharp edges. In this article, ESM is understood as an approximation to the single layer integral equation. In this framework, ESM belongs to the family of Indirect Boundary Element Methods (BEM) with an implicit surface mesh slightly below the object surface, and a zero order integration scheme on each element of the mesh. This implicit mesh is well approximated by the Voronoi diagram associated to the source distribution. This formalism establishes a strong link between these two widely used methods (ESM and BEM) and allows the construction of hybrid methods that can combine performances of both methods. On the first hand, a new hybrid method able to model edge diffraction while remaining as computationally efficient as ESM is developed. In this method, labeled “BEM Voronoi”, equivalent sources are positioned on the surface’s object rather than below it and singularities are handled with the integral formulation. On the other hand, a set of new hybrid methods which combines ESM with higher order integration scheme is constructed. Performances of the new methods developed in this paper are numerically compared to each other and to Finite Element simulations (used as a reference) for modeling scattering from an object excited by a plane wave. Each hybrid model is tested on multiple configurations involving two sets of boundary conditions (rigid and elastic objects respectively) successively immersed in two different external environments (water and air) and for both smooth and a sharp-edged objects. The results show that the hybrid method “BEM Voronoi” better handles edge diffraction than conventional ESM, at a much lower computational cost (implementation of BEM Voronoi is 50 times faster than conventional BEM implementation).