Analysis of a new BEM‐FEM coupling for two‐dimensional fluid‐solid interaction

In this work we present a new numerical method, based on a coupling of finite and boundary elements, to solve a fluid‐solid interaction problem in the plane. The discrete method uses classical Lagrange finite elements adapted to curved boundaries for the field variable and spectral approximation of the unknowns on the artificial boundary. We provide error estimates for this Galerkin scheme and propose a full discretization based on elementary quadrature formulae, showing that the perturbation due to numerical integration preserves the optimal rate of convergence. We also suggest an iterative method to solve the complicated linear systems arising from this type of schemes.