Simple and efficient representations for the fundamental solutions of Stokes flow in a half-space

We derive new formulas for the fundamental solutions of slow, viscous flow, governed by the Stokes equations, in a half-space. They are simpler than the classical representations obtained by Blake and collaborators, and can be efficiently implemented using existing fast solvers libraries. We show, for example, that the velocity field induced by a Stokeslet can be annihilated on the boundary (to establish a zero slip condition) using a single reflected Stokeslet combined with a single Papkovich-Neuber potential that involves only a scalar harmonic function. The new representation has a physically intuitive interpretation

Fast Ewald summation for free-space Stokes potentials

We present a spectrally accurate method for the rapid evaluation of free-space Stokes potentials, i.e. sums involving a large number of free space Green's functions. We consider sums involving stokeslets, stresslets and rotlets that appear in boundary integral methods and potential methods for solving Stokes equations. The method combines the framework of the Spectral Ewald method for periodic problems, with a very recent approach to solving the free-space harmonic and biharmonic equations using fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) on a uniform grid. Convolution with a truncated Gaussian function is used to place point sources on a grid. With precomputation of a scalar grid quantity that does not depend on these sources, the amount of oversampling of the grids with Gaussians can be kept at a factor of two, the minimum for aperiodic convolutions by FFTs. The resulting algorithm has a computational complexity of O(N log N) for problems with N sources and targets. Comparison is made with a fast multipole method (FMM) to show that the performance of the new method is competitive.Comment: 35 pages, 15 figure