Boundary Integral Formulation Research Articles

Deformable-boundary integral formulation for the solution of arbitrarily-forced acoustic wave equation

The propagation of perturbations in fluids is governed by an acoustic wave equation. This paper, first, introduces an arbitrarily-forced wave equation which, properly adapted, gives rise to equations describing specific phenomena of signal perturbation propagation in fluids (like, for instance, the Lighthill and Ffowcs-Williams and Hawkings equations for radiation and scattering). Then, its solution is determined through a novel boundary integral formulation based on the free-space Green function, which is applicable to fluid domains bounded by solid or porous deformable surfaces. Different versions of the proposed boundary integral formulation can be derived, depending on the frame of reference in which they are expressed. The numerical investigation begins with the comparison of the results obtained by the presented formulation against analytical solutions concerning both a pulsating solid sphere and a deformable porous surface that encloses pulsating sources. Then, the equivalence of the formulations expressed in different frames is examined for a bending and twisting non-lifting wing translating at different Mach numbers. Finally, the aeroacoustic field generated by a helicopter rotor model in forward flight is examined to assess the effect of the body deformation on the radiated noise and the accuracy of the numerical simulations by comparison with experimental data. The results of the numerical investigation have provided a comprehensive validation of the deformable-boundary integral formulation presented for the analysis of wave propagation in fluids, and confirmed its capability to study problems of engineering interest.

Numerical simulation of an extensible capsule using regularized Stokes kernels and overset finite differences

In this paper, we present a novel numerical scheme for simulating deformable and extensible capsules suspended in a Stokesian fluid. The main feature of our scheme is a partition-of-unity (POU) based representation of the surface that enables asymptotically faster computations compared to spherical-harmonics based representations. We use a boundary integral equation formulation to represent and discretize hydrodynamic interactions. The boundary integrals are weakly singular. We use the quadrature scheme based on the regularized Stokes kernels by Tlupova and Beale 2019 (given in [34]). We also use partition-of unity based finite differences that are required for the computation of interfacial forces. Given an N-point surface discretization, our numerical scheme has fourth-order accuracy and O(N) asymptotic complexity, which is an improvement over the O(N2log⁡N) complexity of a spherical harmonics based spectral scheme that uses product-rule quadratures by Veerapaneni et al. 2011 [36]. We use GPU acceleration and demonstrate the ability of our code to simulate the complex shapes with high resolution. We study capsules that resist shear and tension and their dynamics in shear and Poiseuille flows. We demonstrate the convergence of the scheme and compare with the state of the art.

Modeling and experiments on the vibro-acoustic analysis of ring stiffened cylindrical shells with internal bulkheads: A comparative study

The vibro-acoustic response of ring stiffened cylindrical shells with internal bulkheads under forced excitation is presented. The numerical analysis model is established using the Jacobi Ritz-Boundary element method. The first-order shear deformation theory, multi-segment technique and artificial spring technology are applied to establish the theoretical model, and the Jacobi orthogonal polynomials are introduced to represent the displacement functions. The Newmark-β integration method is used to obtain the vibration response of the structure, and the time-domain Kirchhoff boundary integral formulation is applied to describe the exterior acoustic field. The vibration and sound radiation of the ring stiffened cylindrical shell under impact and narrow band random loading were measured. The comparative study reveals that the results obtained from the proposed method agree well with the experimental results. The stiffeners and bulkheads have a significant effect on the vibration characteristics of the structure. Additionally, some physical insights into the resonant peaks and sound pressure directivity of the cylindrical shells are provided.

The boundary element method for acoustic transmission with nonconforming grids

Acoustic wave propagation through a homogeneous material embedded in an unbounded medium can be formulated as a boundary integral equation and accurately solved with the boundary element method. The computational efficiency deteriorates at high frequencies due to the increase in mesh size with a fixed number of elements per wavelength and also at high material contrasts due to the ill-conditioning of the linear system. This study presents the design of boundary element methods feasible for nonconforming surface meshes at the material interface. The nonconforming algorithm allows for independent grid generation, improves flexibility, and reduces the degrees of freedom. It works for different boundary integral formulations for Helmholtz transmission problems, operator preconditioning, and coupling with finite element solvers. The extensive numerical benchmarks at canonical configurations and an acoustic foam model confirm the significant improvements in computational efficiency when employing the nonconforming grid coupling in the boundary element method.

Learning domain-independent Green’s function for elliptic partial differential equations

Green’s function characterizes a partial differential equation (PDE) and maps its solution in the entire domain as integrals. Finding the analytical form of Green’s function is a non-trivial exercise, especially for a PDE defined on a complex domain or a PDE with variable coefficients. In this paper, we propose a novel boundary integral network to learn the domain-independent Green’s function, referred to as BIN-G. We evaluate the Green’s function in the BIN-G using a radial basis function (RBF) kernel-based neural network. We train the BIN-G by minimizing the residual of the PDE and the mean squared errors of the solutions to the boundary integral equations for prescribed test functions. By leveraging the symmetry of the Green’s function and controlling refinements of the RBF kernel near the singularity of the Green function, we demonstrate that our numerical scheme enables fast training and accurate evaluation of the Green’s function for PDEs with variable coefficients. The learned Green’s function is independent of the domain geometries, forcing terms, and boundary conditions in the boundary integral formulation. Numerical experiments verify the desired properties of the method and the expected accuracy for the two-dimensional Poisson and Helmholtz equations with variable coefficients.

A Novel Boundary Integral Formulation for the Biharmonic Wave Scattering Problem

A Novel Boundary Integral Formulation for the Biharmonic Wave Scattering Problem

Method of virtual sources using on-surface radiation conditions for the Helmholtz equation

We develop a novel method of virtual sources to formulate boundary integral equations for exterior wave propagation problems. However, by contrast to classical boundary integral formulations, we displace the singularity of the Green’s function by a small distance h>0. As a result, the discretization can be performed on the actual physical boundary with continuous kernels so that any naive quadrature scheme can be used to approximate integral operators. Using on-surface radiation conditions, we combine single- and double-layer potential representations of the solution to arrive at a well-conditioned system upon discretization. The virtual displacement parameter h controls the conditioning of the discrete system. We provide mathematical guidance to choose h, in terms of the wavelength and mesh refinements, in order to strike a balance between accuracy and stability. Proof-of-concept implementations are presented, including piecewise linear and isogeometric element formulations in two- and three-dimensional settings. We observe exceptionally well-behaved spectra, and solve the corresponding systems using matrix-free GMRES iterations. The method is implemented for problems with known analytical solutions for comparison. We conclude that the proposed method leads to accurate solutions and good stability for a wide range of wavelengths and mesh refinements.

On Solving Nonlinear Elasticity Problems Using a Boundary-Elements-Based Solution Method

The attractiveness of the boundary element method—the reduction in the problem dimension by one—is lost when solving nonlinear solid mechanics problems. The point collocation method applied to strong-form differential equations is appealing because it is easy to implement. The method becomes inaccurate in the presence of traction boundary conditions, which are inevitable in solid mechanics. A judicious combination of the point collocation and the boundary integral formulation of Navier’s equation allows a pure boundary element method to be obtained for the solution of nonlinear elasticity problems. The potential of the approach is investigated in some simple examples considering isotropic and anisotropic material models in the total Lagrangian framework.

A Burton–Miller-type boundary element method based on a hybrid integral representation and its application to cavity scattering

This study builds on a recent paper by Lai et al. (2018) in which a novel boundary integral formulation is presented for scalar wave scattering analysis in two-dimensional layered and half-spaces. The seminal paper proposes a hybrid integral representation that combines the Sommerfeld integral and layer potential to efficiently deal with the boundaries of infinite length. In this work, we modify the integral formulation to eliminate the fictitious eigenvalues by employing the integral equation of the Burton–Miller type. We also discuss reasonable parameter settings for the hybrid integral equation to ensure efficient and accurate numerical solutions. Furthermore, we extend the modified formulation for the scattering from a cavity in a half-space whose boundary is locally perturbed. To address the cavity scattering, we introduce a virtual boundary enclosing the cavity and couple the integral equation on it with the hybrid equation. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through numerical examples.

Boundary integral formulation of the cell-by-cell model of cardiac electrophysiology

We propose a boundary element method for the accurate solution of the cell-by-cell bidomain model of electrophysiology. The cell-by-cell model, also called Extracellular-Membrane-Intracellular (EMI) model, is a system of reaction–diffusion equations describing the evolution of the electric potential within each domain: intra- and extra-cellular space and the cellular membrane. The system is parabolic but degenerate because the time derivative is only in the membrane domain. In this work, we adopt a boundary-integral formulation for removing the degeneracy in the system and recast it to a parabolic equation on the membrane. The formulation is also numerically advantageous since the number of degrees of freedom is sensibly reduced compared to the original model. Specifically, we prove that the boundary-element discretization of the EMI model is equivalent to a system of ordinary differential equations, and we consider a time discretization based on the multirate explicit stabilized Runge–Kutta method. We numerically show that our scheme convergences exponentially in space for the single-cell case. We finally provide several numerical experiments of biological interest.

A multi-physics approach for modelling noise mitigation using an air-bubble curtain in impact pile driving

Underwater noise from offshore pile driving has raised significant concerns over its ecological impact on marine life. To protect the marine environment and maintain the sustainable development of wind energy, strict governmental regulations are imposed. Assessment and mitigation of underwater noise are usually required to ensure that sound levels stay within the noise thresholds. The air-bubble curtain system is one of the most widely applied noise mitigation techniques. This paper presents a multi-physics approach for modeling an air-bubble curtain system in application to offshore pile driving. The complete model consists of four modules: (i) a compressible flow model to account for the transport of compressed air from the offshore vessel to the perforated hose located in the seabed; (ii) a hydrodynamic model for capturing the characteristics of bubble clouds in varying development phases through depth; (iii) an acoustic model for predicting the sound insertion loss of the air-bubble curtain; and (iv) a vibroacoustic model for the prediction of underwater noise from pile driving which is coupled to the acoustic model in (iii) through a boundary integral formulation. The waterborne and soilborne noise transmission paths are examined separately, allowing us to explore the amount of energy channeled through the seabed and through the bubble curtain in the water column. A parametric study is performed to examine the optimal configuration of the double bubble curtain system for various soil conditions and pile configurations. Model predictions are compared with measured data. The model allows for a large number of simulations to examine different configurations of a single bubble curtain and a double big bubble curtain.

Nyström discretizations of boundary integral equations for the solution of 2D elastic scattering problems

We present three high-order Nyström discretization strategies of various boundary integral equation formulations of the impenetrable time-harmonic Navier equations in two dimensions. One class of such formulations is based on the four classical Boundary Integral Operators (BIOs) associated with the Green’s function of the Navier operator. We consider two types of Nyström discretizations of these operators, one that relies on Kussmaul–Martensen logarithmic splittings (Chapko et al., 2000; Domínguez and Turc, 2000), and the other on Alpert quadratures (Alpert, 1999). In addition, we consider an alternative formulation of Navier scattering problems based on Helmholtz decompositions of the elastic fields (Dong et al., 2021), which can be solved via a system of boundary integral equations that feature integral operators associated with the Helmholtz equation. Owing to the fact that some of the BIOs that are featured in those formulations are non-standard, we use Quadrature by Expansion (QBX) methods for their high order Nyström discretization. Alternatively, we use Maue integration by parts techniques to recast those non-standard operators in terms of single and double layer Helmholtz BIOs whose Nyström discretizations is amenable to the Kussmaul–Martensen methodology. We present a variety of numerical results concerning the high order accuracy that our Nyström discretization elastic scattering solvers achieve for both smooth and Lipschitz boundaries. We also present extensive comparisons regarding the iterative behavior of solvers based on different integral equations in the high frequency regime. Finally, we illustrate how some of the Nyström discretizations we considered can be incorporated seamlessly into the Convolution Quadrature (CQ) methodology to deliver high-order solutions of the time domain elastic scattering problems.

Fast and accurate boundary element methods for large-scale computational acoustics

The boundary element method (BEM) is a powerful algorithm to solve the Helmholtz equation for harmonic acoustic waves. The explicit use of Green’s functions avoids domain truncation of unbounded regions and accurately models wave propagation through homogeneous materials. Furthermore, fast multipole and hierarchical compression techniques provide efficient computations for dense matrix multiplications. However, the convergence of the iterative linear solvers deteriorates significantly when frequencies are high or materials have large contrasts in density or speed of sound. This talk presents several algorithmic improvements of the BEM. First, a preconditioner based on on-surface radiation conditions drastically reduces the iteration count of linear solvers at high frequencies. Second, anovel boundary integral formulation remains well-conditioned for high-contrast transmission problems. We used our fast and accurate BEM implementation to simulate focused ultrasound propagation in the human body, which can be translated to important biomedical applications such as the non-invasive treatment of liver cancer and neuromodulation of the brain. We validated the methodology within the benchmarking exercise of the International Transcranial Ultrasonic Stimulation Safety and Standards (ITRUSST) consortium. As a second application, we simulated the collective resonances of water-entrained arrays of air bubbles. Finally, we implemented all functionality in our open-source Python library, OptimUS.

Time-domain multiple traces boundary integral formulation for acoustic wave scattering in 2D

We present a novel computational scheme to solve acoustic wave transmission problems over two-dimensional composite scatterers, i.e. penetrable obstacles possessing junctions or triple points. The continuous problem is cast as a local multiple traces time-domain boundary integral formulation. For discretization in time and space, we resort to convolution quadrature schemes coupled to a non-conforming spatial spectral discretization based on second kind Chebyshev polynomials displaying fast convergence. Computational experiments confirm convergence of multistep and multistage convolution quadrature for a variety of complex domains.

A kernel-free boundary integral method for the nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann equation

This work proposes a boundary integral formulation based Cartesian grid method for the nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann (PB) interface problem in biophysics. The method (a) does not have the limitation associated with the standard finite difference method for complex interfaces, (b) avoids the generation of any unstructured volume or surface grids needed by the finite element method, and (c) solves the nonlinear and variable coefficient PDE in the framework of boundary integral equations. The method solves the nonlinear PB equation with the Newton iterative method. It first reformulates the linearized PB equation in each Newton iteration as a Fredholm system of two boundary integral (BI) equations of the second kind, which is well-conditioned, and then solves the BI system with a Krylov subspace method. The evaluation of boundary and volume integrals involved in the solution of the BI system is done with a kernel-free method, which does not need to know Green's function associated with the variable coefficient PB equation. The kernel-free method evaluates volume and boundary integrals by solving equivalent simple interface problems on Cartesian grids with either a fast Fourier transform based Poisson solver or a geometric multigrid preconditioned conjugate gradient solver, either of which involves computational work essentially linearly proportional to the number of nodes on the Cartesian grid. Numerical examples in both two and three space dimensions are presented to demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed numerical method.

Boundary Value Caching for Walk on Spheres

Grid-free Monte Carlo methods such as walk on spheres can be used to solve elliptic partial differential equations without mesh generation or global solves. However, such methods independently estimate the solution at every point, and hence do not take advantage of the high spatial regularity of solutions to elliptic problems. We propose a fast caching strategy which first estimates solution values and derivatives at randomly sampled points along the boundary of the domain (or a local region of interest). These cached values then provide cheap, output-sensitive evaluation of the solution (or its gradient) at interior points, via a boundary integral formulation. Unlike classic boundary integral methods, our caching scheme introduces zero statistical bias and does not require a dense global solve. Moreover we can handle imperfect geometry (e.g., with self-intersections) and detailed boundary/source terms without repairing or resampling the boundary representation. Overall, our scheme is similar in spirit to virtual point light methods from photorealistic rendering: it suppresses the typical salt-and-pepper noise characteristic of independent Monte Carlo estimates, while still retaining the many advantages of Monte Carlo solvers: progressive evaluation, trivial parallelization, geometric robustness, etc. We validate our approach using test problems from visual and geometric computing.

A Practical Walk-on-Boundary Method for Boundary Value Problems

We introduce the walk-on-boundary (WoB) method for solving boundary value problems to computer graphics. WoB is a grid-free Monte Carlo solver for certain classes of second order partial differential equations. A similar Monte Carlo solver, the walk-on-spheres (WoS) method, has been recently popularized in computer graphics due to its advantages over traditional spatial discretization-based alternatives. We show that WoB's intrinsic properties yield further advantages beyond those of WoS. Unlike WoS, WoB naturally supports various boundary conditions (Dirichlet, Neumann, Robin, and mixed) for both interior and exterior domains. WoB builds upon boundary integral formulations, and it is mathematically more similar to light transport simulation in rendering than the random walk formulation of WoS. This similarity between WoB and rendering allows us to implement WoB on top of Monte Carlo ray tracing, and to incorporate advanced rendering techniques (e.g., bidirectional estimators with multiple importance sampling, the virtual point lights method, and Markov chain Monte Carlo) into WoB. WoB does not suffer from the intrinsic bias of WoS near the boundary and can estimate solutions precisely on the boundary. Our numerical results highlight the advantages of WoB over WoS as an attractive alternative to solve boundary value problems based on Monte Carlo.

High-order corrected trapezoidal rules for a class of singular integrals

We present a family of high-order trapezoidal rule-based quadratures for a class of singular integrals, where the integrand has a point singularity. The singular part of the integrand is expanded in a Taylor series involving terms of increasing smoothness. The quadratures are based on the trapezoidal rule, with the quadrature weights for Cartesian nodes close to the singularity judiciously corrected based on the expansion. High-order accuracy can be achieved by utilizing a sufficient number of correction nodes around the singularity to approximate the terms in the series expansion. The derived quadratures are applied to the implicit boundary integral formulation of surface integrals involving the Laplace layer kernels.

Insights on using the boundary integral SPH formulations to calculate Laplacians with Dirichlet boundaries

Handling boundary conditions in Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) has been known as a challenging problem for a long time, especially when particle approximation is implemented for truncated kernels on the boundary. This work develops a novel particle consistent gradient formulation to impose the Dirichlet boundary condition on a Laplacian with boundary integrals. Boundary integral formulation allows the accurate imposition of boundary conditions without creating virtual particles to extend boundaries, as used in conventional SPH modeling practices. Here, boundary integral formulations are presented for Laplacian operators and the imposition of Dirichlet boundary conditions on arbitrary boundary shapes. We also explore using this particle consistent first-order derivative twice to evaluate the entire Laplacian. Further, the convergence characteristics of different Laplacian formulations with boundary integrals are discussed. Finally, numerical experiments solving explicit thermal and fluid problems are presented to demonstrate the robustness of various Laplacian operators for practical use.

Mitigation of hydroelastic response in pneumatically supported floating structures

Pneumatically supported floating structures, which utilize an aircushion below the structural bottom, have been suggested to remedy the excessive hydroelastic response of the conventional pontoon-type floating structures. This paper presents an analytical study to examine the hydroelastic responses of the pneumatically supported floating structures. For the hydroelastic analysis, the fluid was modeled as a 2D-strip of finite depth seawater, whilst the floating structure was modeled as a beam with zero-draft. A direct coupled model was then constructed by using the boundary integral formulation for the fluid and FEM for the structure and by incorporating a pneumatic factor at the fluid-structure interface to consider the compressibility of the aircushion. Additionally, hydroelastic responses of the pneumatically supported type were compared for the pontoon-type for a wide range of pneumatic factors and regular waves. As a result, the pneumatic supports could significantly reduce the hydroelastic responses in most cases and that the response reduction may be markedly enhanced when the pneumatic factor was taken as small for a relatively short incident wave. Substantially, the analytical technique used in the present study can examine the design conditions, as being essential for practical applications of the pneumatically supported floating structures.