Accurate computation of Galerkin double surface integrals in the 3-D boundary element method

Many boundary element integral equation kernels are based on the Green's functions of the Laplace and Helmholtz equations in three dimensions. These include, for example, the Laplace, Helmholtz, elasticity, Stokes, and Maxwell's equations. Integral equation formulations lead to more compact, but dense linear systems. These dense systems are often solved iteratively via Krylov subspace methods, which may be accelerated via the fast multipole method. There are advantages to Galerkin formulations for such integral equations, as they treat problems associated with kernel singularity, and lead to symmetric and better conditioned matrices. However, the Galerkin method requires each entry in the system matrix to be created via the computation of a double surface integral over one or more pairs of triangles. There are a number of semi-analytical methods to treat these integrals, which all have some issues, and are discussed in this paper. We present novel methods to compute all the integrals that arise in Galerkin formulations involving kernels based on the Laplace and Helmholtz Green's functions to any specified accuracy. Integrals involving completely geometrically separated triangles are non-singular and are computed using a technique based on spherical harmonics and multipole expansions and translations, which results in the integration of polynomial functions over the triangles. Integrals involving cases where the triangles have common vertices, edges, or are coincident are treated via scaling and symmetry arguments, combined with automatic recursive geometric decomposition of the integrals. Example results are presented, and the developed software is available as open source

Efficient Exact Quadrature of Regular Solid Harmonics Times Polynomials Over Simplices in R3\mathbb{R}^3

A generalization of a recently introduced recursive numerical method for the exact evaluation of integrals of regular solid harmonics and their normal derivatives over simplex elements in $\mathbb{R}^3$ is presented. The original Quadrature to Expansion (Q2X) method achieves optimal per-element asymptotic complexity, however, it considered only constant density functions over the elements. Here, we generalize this method to support arbitrary degree polynomial density functions, which is achieved in an extended recursive framework while maintaining the optimality of the complexity. The method is derived for 1- and 2- simplex elements in $\mathbb{R}^3$ and can be used for the boundary element method and vortex methods coupled with the fast multipole method

Layer potential quadrature on manifold boundary elements with constant densities for Laplace and Helmholtz kernels in R3\mathbb{R}^3

A method is proposed for evaluation of single and double layer potentials of the Laplace and Helmholtz equations on piecewise smooth manifold boundary elements with constant densities. The method is based on a novel two-term decomposition of the layer potentials, derived by means of differential geometry. The first term is an integral of a differential 2-form which can be reduced to contour integrals using Stokes' theorem, while the second term is related to the element curvature. This decomposition reduces the degree of singularity and the curvature term can be further regularized by a polar coordinate transform. The method can handle singular and nearly singular integrals. Numerical results validating the accuracy of the method are presented for all combinations of single and double layer potentials, for the Laplace and Helmholtz kernels, and for singular and nearly singular integrals