A Technique for Plane-Symmetric Sound Field Analysis in the Fast Multipole Boundary Element Method

The fast multipole boundary element method (FMBEM) is an advanced BEM, with which both the operation count and the memory requirements are O(N a log b N) for large-scale problems, where N is the degree of freedom (DOF), a ≥ 1 and b ≥ 0. In this paper, an efficient technique for analyses of plane-symmetric sound fields in the acoustic FMBEM is proposed. Half-space sound fields where an infinite rigid plane exists are typical cases of these fields. When one plane of symmetry is assumed, the number of elements and cells required for the FMBEM with this technique are half of those for the FMBEM used in a naive manner. In consequence, this technique reduces both the computational complexity and the memory requirements for the FMBEM almost by half. The technique is validated with respect to accuracy and efficiency through numerical study.