A transient boundary element method model of Schroeder diffuser scattering using well mouth impedance

Room acoustic diffusers can be used to treat critical listening environments to improve sound quality. One popular class is Schroeder diffusers, which comprise wells of varying depth separated by thin fins. This paper concerns a new approach to enable the modelling of these complex surfaces in the time domain. Mostly, diffuser scattering is predicted using steady-state, single frequency methods. A popular approach is to use a frequency domain Boundary Element Method (BEM) model of a box containing the diffuser, where the mouth of each well is replaced by a compliant surface with appropriate surface impedance. The best way of representing compliant surfaces in time domain prediction models, such as the transient BEM is, however, currently unresolved. A representation based on surface impedance yields convolution kernels which involve future sound, so is not compatible with the current generation of time-marching transient BEM solvers. Consequently, this paper proposes the use of a surface reflection kernel for modelling well behaviour and this is tested in a time domain BEM implementation. The new algorithm is verified on two surfaces including a Schroeder diffuser model and accurate results are obtained. It is hoped that this representation may be extended to arbitrary compliant locally reacting materials

An adaptive octree finite element method for PDEs posed on surfaces

The paper develops a finite element method for partial differential equations posed on hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^N$, $N=2,3$. The method uses traces of bulk finite element functions on a surface embedded in a volumetric domain. The bulk finite element space is defined on an octree grid which is locally refined or coarsened depending on error indicators and estimated values of the surface curvatures. The cartesian structure of the bulk mesh leads to easy and efficient adaptation process, while the trace finite element method makes fitting the mesh to the surface unnecessary. The number of degrees of freedom involved in computations is consistent with the two-dimension nature of surface PDEs. No parametrization of the surface is required; it can be given implicitly by a level set function. In practice, a variant of the marching cubes method is used to recover the surface with the second order accuracy. We prove the optimal order of accuracy for the trace finite element method in $H^1$ and $L^2$ surface norms for a problem with smooth solution and quasi-uniform mesh refinement. Experiments with less regular problems demonstrate optimal convergence with respect to the number of degrees of freedom, if grid adaptation is based on an appropriate error indicator. The paper shows results of numerical experiments for a variety of geometries and problems, including advection-diffusion equations on surfaces. Analysis and numerical results of the paper suggest that combination of cartesian adaptive meshes and the unfitted (trace) finite elements provide simple, efficient, and reliable tool for numerical treatment of PDEs posed on surfaces

Comparison of Node-Centered and Cell-Centered Unstructured Finite-Volume Discretizations: Inviscid Fluxes

Cell-centered and node-centered approaches have been compared for unstructured finite-volume discretization of inviscid fluxes. The grids range from regular grids to irregular grids, including mixed-element grids and grids with random perturbations of nodes. Accuracy, complexity, and convergence rates of defect-correction iterations are studied for eight nominally second-order accurate schemes: two node-centered schemes with weighted and unweighted least-squares (LSQ) methods for gradient reconstruction and six cell-centered schemes two node-averaging with and without clipping and four schemes that employ different stencils for LSQ gradient reconstruction. The cell-centered nearest-neighbor (CC-NN) scheme has the lowest complexity; a version of the scheme that involves smart augmentation of the LSQ stencil (CC-SA) has only marginal complexity increase. All other schemes have larger complexity; complexity of node-centered (NC) schemes are somewhat lower than complexity of cell-centered node-averaging (CC-NA) and full-augmentation (CC-FA) schemes. On highly anisotropic grids typical of those encountered in grid adaptation, discretization errors of five of the six cell-centered schemes converge with second order on all tested grids; the CC-NA scheme with clipping degrades solution accuracy to first order. The NC schemes converge with second order on regular and/or triangular grids and with first order on perturbed quadrilaterals and mixed-element grids. All schemes may produce large relative errors in gradient reconstruction on grids with perturbed nodes. Defect-correction iterations for schemes employing weighted least-square gradient reconstruction diverge on perturbed stretched grids. Overall, the CC-NN and CC-SA schemes offer the best options of the lowest complexity and secondorder discretization errors. On anisotropic grids over a curved body typical of turbulent flow simulations, the discretization errors converge with second order and are small for the CC-NN, CC-SA, and CC-FA schemes on all grids and for NC schemes on triangular grids; the discretization errors of the CC-NA scheme without clipping do not converge on irregular grids. Accurate gradient reconstruction can be achieved by introducing a local approximate mapping; without approximate mapping, only the NC scheme with weighted LSQ method provides accurate gradients. Defect correction iterations for the CC-NA scheme without clipping diverge; for the NC scheme with weighted LSQ method, the iterations either diverge or converge very slowly. The best option in curved geometries is the CC-SA scheme that offers low complexity, second-order discretization errors, and fast convergence

Global convection in Earth's mantle : advanced numerical methods and extreme-scale simulations

The thermal convection of rock in Earth's mantle and associated plate tectonics are modeled by nonlinear incompressible Stokes and energy equations. This dissertation focuses on the development of advanced, scalable linear and nonlinear solvers for numerical simulations of realistic instantaneous mantle flow, where we must overcome several computational challenges. The most notable challenges are the severe nonlinearity, heterogeneity, and anisotropy due to the mantle's rheology as well as a wide range of spatial scales and highly localized features. Resolving the crucial small scale features efficiently necessitates adaptive methods, while computational results greatly benefit from a high accuracy per degree of freedom and local mass conservation. Consequently, the discretization of Earth's mantle is carried out by high-order finite elements on aggressively adaptively refined hexahedral meshes with a continuous, nodal velocity approximation and a discontinuous, modal pressure approximation. These velocity--pressure pairings yield optimal asymptotic convergence rates of the finite element approximation to the infinite-dimensional solution with decreasing mesh element size, are inf-sup stable on general, non-conforming hexahedral meshes with "hanging nodes,'' and have the advantage of preserving mass locally at the element level due to the discontinuous pressure. However, because of the difficulties cited above and the desired accuracy, the large implicit systems to be solved are extremely poorly conditioned and sophisticated linear and nonlinear solvers including powerful preconditioning techniques are required. The nonlinear Stokes system is solved using a grid continuation, inexact Newton--Krylov method. We measure the residual of the momentum equation in the H⁻¹-norm for backtracking line search to avoid overly conservative update steps that are significantly reduced from one. The Newton linearization is augmented by a perturbation of a highly nonlinear term in mantle's rheology, resulting in dramatically improved nonlinear convergence. We present a new Schur complement-based Stokes preconditioner, weighted BFBT, that exhibits robust fast convergence for Stokes problems with smooth but highly varying (up to 10 orders of magnitude) viscosities, optimal algorithmic scalability with respect to mesh refinement, and only a mild dependence on the polynomial order of high-order finite element discretizations. In addition, we derive theoretical eigenvalue bounds to prove spectral equivalence of our inverse Schur complement approximation. Finally, we present a parallel hybrid spectral--geometric--algebraic multigrid (HMG) to approximate the inverses of the Stokes system's viscous block and variable-coefficient pressure Poisson operators within weighted BFBT. Building on the parallel scalability of HMG, our Stokes solver demonstrates excellent parallel scalability to 1.6 million CPU cores without sacrificing algorithmic optimality.Computational Science, Engineering, and Mathematic

A windowed Green function method for elastic scattering problems on a half-space

This paper presents a windowed Green function (WGF) method for the numerical solution of problems of elastic scattering by “locally-rough surfaces” (i.e., local perturbations of a half space), under either Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions, and in both two and three spatial dimensions. The proposed WGF method relies on an integral-equation formulation based on the free-space Green function, together with smooth operator windowing (based on a “slow-rise” windowing function) and efficient high-order singular-integration methods. The approach avoids the evaluation of the expensive layer Green function for elastic problems on a half-space, and it yields uniformly fast convergence for all incident angles. Numerical experiments for both two and three dimensional problems are presented, demonstrating the accuracy and super-algebraically fast convergence of the proposed method as the window-size grows