2D Structural Acoustic Analysis Using the FEM/FMBEM with Different Coupled Element Types

A FEM-BEM coupling approach is used for acoustic fluid-structure interaction analysis. The FEM is used to model the structure and the BEM is used to model the exterior acoustic domain. The aim of this work is to improve the computational efficiency and accuracy of the conventional FEM-BEM coupling approach. The fast multipole method (FMM) is applied to accelerating the matrix-vector products in BEM. The Burton-Miller formulation is used to overcome the fictitious eigen-frequency problem when using a single Helmholtz boundary integral equation for exterior acoustic problems. The continuous higher order boundary elements and discontinuous higher order boundary elements for 2D problem are developed in this work to achieve higher accuracy in the coupling analysis. The performance for coupled element types is compared via a simple example with analytical solution, and the optimal element type is obtained. Numerical examples are presented to show the relative errors of different coupled element types.