44 research outputs found
Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure
A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium
New hybrid quadrature schemes for weakly singular kernels applied to isogeometric boundary elements for 3D Stokes flow
This work proposes four novel hybrid quadrature schemes for the efficient and
accurate evaluation of weakly singular boundary integrals (1/r kernel) on
arbitrary smooth surfaces. Such integrals appear in boundary element analysis
for several partial differential equations including the Stokes equation for
viscous flow and the Helmholtz equation for acoustics. The proposed quadrature
schemes apply a Duffy transform-based quadrature rule to surface elements
containing the singularity and classical Gaussian quadrature to the remaining
elements. Two of the four schemes additionally consider a special treatment for
elements near to the singularity, where refined Gaussian quadrature and a new
moment-fitting quadrature rule are used.
The hybrid quadrature schemes are systematically studied on flat B-spline
patches and on NURBS spheres considering two different sphere discretizations:
An exact single-patch sphere with degenerate control points at the poles and an
approximate discretization that consist of six patches with regular elements.
The efficiency of the quadrature schemes is further demonstrated in boundary
element analysis for Stokes flow, where steady problems with rotating and
translating curved objects are investigated in convergence studies for both,
mesh and quadrature refinement. Much higher convergence rates are observed for
the proposed new schemes in comparison to classical schemes
A high-performance boundary element method and its applications in engineering
As a semi-numerical and semi-analytical method, owing to the inherent advantage, of boundary-only discretisation, the boundary element method (BEM) has been widely applied to problems with complicated geometries, stress concentration problems, infinite domain problems, and many others. However, domain integrals and non-symmetrical and dense matrix systems are two obstacles for BEM which have hindered the its further development and application. This thesis is aimed at proposing a high-performance BEM to tackle the above two drawbacks and broaden the application scope of BEM. In this thesis, a detailed introduction to the traditional BEM is given and several popular algorithms are introduced or proposed to enhance the performance of BEM. Numerical examples in heat conduction analysis, thermoelastic analysis and thermoelastic fracture problems are performed to assess the efficiency and correction of the algorithms. In addition, necessary theoretical derivations are embraced for establishing novel boundary integral equations (BIEs) for specific engineering problems. The following three parts are the main content of this thesis. (1) The first part (Part II consisting of two chapters) is aimed at heat conduction analysis by BEM. The coefficient matrix of equations formed by BEM in solving problems is fully-populated which occupy large computer memory. To deal with that, the fast multipole method (FMM) is introduced to energize the line integration boundary element method (LIBEM) to performs better in efficiency. In addition, to compute domain integrals with known or unknown integrand functions which are caused by heat sources or heterogeneity, a novel BEM, the adaptive orthogonal interpolation moving least squares (AOIMLS) method enhanced LIBEM, which also inherits the advantage of boundary-only discretisation, is proposed. Unlike LIBEM, which is an accurate and stable method for computing domain integrals, but only works when the mathematical expression of integral function in domain integrals is known, the AOIMLS enhanced LIBEM can compute domain integrals with known or unknown integral functions, which ensures all the nonlinear and nonhomogeneous problems can be solved without domain discretisation. In addition, the AOIMLS can adaptively avoid singular or ill-conditioned moment matrices, thus ensuring the stability of the calculation results. (2) In the second part (Part III consisting of four chapters), the thermoelastic problems and fracture problems are the main objectives. Due to considering thermal loads, domain integrals appear in the BIEs of the thermoelastic problems, and the expression of integrand functions is known or not depending on the temperature distribution given or not, the AOIMLS enhanced LIBEM is introduced to conduct thermoelasticity analysis thereby. Besides, a series of novel unified boundary integral equations based on BEM and DDM are derived for solving fracture problems and thermoelastic fracture problems in finite and infinite domains. Two sets of unified BIEs are derived for fracture problems in finite and infinite domains based on the direct BEM and DDM respectively, which can provide accurate and stable results. Another two sets of BIEs are addressed by employing indirect BEM and DDM, which cannot ensure a stable result, thereby a modified indirect BEM is proposed which performs much more stable. Moreover, a set of novel BIEs based on the direct BEM and DDM for cracked domains under thermal stress is proposed. (3) In the third part (Part IV consisting of one chapter), a high-efficiency combined BEM and discrete element method (DEM) is proposed to compute the inner stress distribution and particle breakage of particle assemblies based on the solution mapping scheme. For the stress field computation of particles with similar geometry, a template particle is used as the representative particle, so that only the related coefficient matrices of one template particle in the local coordinate system are needed to be calculated, while the coefficient matrices of the other particles, can be obtained by mapping between the local and global coordinate systems. Thus, the combined BEM and DEM is much more effective when modelling a large-scale particle system with a small number of distinct possible particle shapes. Furthermore, with the help of the Hoek-Brown criterion, the possible cracks or breakage paths of a particle can be obtained
1-D broadside-radiating leaky-wave antenna based on a numerically synthesized impedance surface
A newly-developed deterministic numerical technique for the automated design of metasurface antennas is applied here for the first time to the design of a 1-D printed Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA) for broadside radiation. The surface impedance synthesis process does not require any a priori knowledge on the impedance pattern, and starts from a mask constraint on the desired far-field and practical bounds on the unit cell impedance values. The designed reactance surface for broadside radiation exhibits a non conventional patterning; this highlights the merit of using an automated design process for a design well known to be challenging for analytical methods. The antenna is physically implemented with an array of metal strips with varying gap widths and simulation results show very good agreement with the predicted performance
High-frequency estimates on boundary integral operators for the Helmholtz exterior Neumann problem
We study a commonly-used second-kind boundary-integral equation for solving
the Helmholtz exterior Neumann problem at high frequency, where, writing
for the boundary of the obstacle, the relevant integral operators map
to itself. We prove new frequency-explicit bounds on the norms of
both the integral operator and its inverse. The bounds on the norm are valid
for piecewise-smooth and are sharp up to factors of (where
is the wavenumber), and the bounds on the norm of the inverse are valid for
smooth and are observed to be sharp at least when is smooth
with strictly-positive curvature. Together, these results give bounds on the
condition number of the operator on ; this is the first time
condition-number bounds have been proved for this operator for
obstacles other than balls
Modelling, Simulation and Data Analysis in Acoustical Problems
Modelling and simulation in acoustics is currently gaining importance. In fact, with the development and improvement of innovative computational techniques and with the growing need for predictive models, an impressive boost has been observed in several research and application areas, such as noise control, indoor acoustics, and industrial applications. This led us to the proposal of a special issue about āModelling, Simulation and Data Analysis in Acoustical Problemsā, as we believe in the importance of these topics in modern acousticsā studies. In total, 81 papers were submitted and 33 of them were published, with an acceptance rate of 37.5%. According to the number of papers submitted, it can be affirmed that this is a trending topic in the scientific and academic community and this special issue will try to provide a future reference for the research that will be developed in coming years
Energetic Boundary Element Method for accurate solution of damped waves hard scattering problems
AbstractThe paper deals with the numerical solution of 2D wave propagation exterior problems including viscous and material damping coefficients and equipped by Neumann boundary condition, hence modeling the hard scattering of damped waves. The differential problem, which includes, besides diffusion, advection and reaction terms, is written as a spaceātime boundary integral equation (BIE) whose kernel is given by the hypersingular fundamental solution of the 2D damped waves operator. The resulting BIE is solved by a modified Energetic Boundary Element Method, where a suitable kernel treatment is introduced for the evaluation of the discretization linear system matrix entries represented by spaceātime quadruple integrals with hypersingular kernel in space variables. A wide variety of numerical results, obtained varying both damping coefficients and discretization parameters, is presented and shows accuracy and stability of the proposed technique, confirming what was theoretically proved for the simpler undamped case. Post-processing phase is also taken into account, giving the approximate solution of the exterior differential problem involving damped waves propagation around disconnected obstacles and bounded domains