POTENTIAL AND WAVE-PROPAGATION PROBLEMS USING THE BOUNDARY ELEMENT METHOD AND BEM-SUBREGIONS

In this paper the efficiency of the boundary element method (BEM) for the solution of potential and wave propagation problems using BEM-subregions is examined. It will be shown. that thc commonly used u-q-continuity technique for the coupling of BEM-subregions, does not always improve the accuracy of the numerical solution. The reason for this behavior, as well as an alternative BEM-formulation based on cardinal (1-0) weighting functions leading to symmetric and positive definite mass- and stiffness-matrices, will be investigated. Numerical results verify the theoretical statements.