Abstract:

There is a rapidly growing interest in using infinite elements based on multipole expansions for modeling acoustic wave propagation in unbounded domains, either time harmonic or transient. The technology has exhibited many advantages, foremost among them being a very high computational efficiency, convergence and, therefore, unlimited accuracy throughout the entire fluid domain, broadband capability, and a conventional finite-element software implementation. The latter enables these infinite elements, along with conventional finite-size acoustic elements and coupling elements, to be easily added to standard structural element libraries to convert structural codes to structural acoustic codes for fast, accurate modeling of scattering and/or radiation problems in exterior regions. The talk will cover: basic concepts of multipoles, multipole expansions, and the related infinite elements; past contributions to the field; current research, including the author's; and an assessment of the most promising direction for this technology.