M. T. Homer Reid

M. T. Homer Reid, Steven G. Johnson, Jacob K. White

We present a generic technique, automated by computer-algebra systems and available as open-source software \cite{scuff-em}, for efficient numerical evaluation of a large family of singular and nonsingular 4-dimensional integrals over triangle-product domains, such as those arising in the boundary-element method (BEM) of computational electromagnetism. To date, practical implementation of BEM solvers has often required the aggregation of multiple disparate integral-evaluation schemes to treat all of the distinct types of integrals needed for a given BEM formulation; in contrast, our technique allows many different types of integrals to be handled by the \emph{same} algorithm and the same code implementation. Our method is a significant generalization of the Taylor--Duffy approach \cite{Taylor2003,Duffy1982}, which was originally presented for just a single type of integrand; in addition to generalizing this technique to a broad class of integrands, we also achieve a significant improvement in its efficiency by showing how the \emph{dimension} of the final numerical integral may often be reduced by one. In particular, if $n$ is the number of common vertices between the two triangles, in many cases we can reduce the dimension of the integral from $4-n$ to $3-n$, obtaining a closed-form analytical result for $n=3$ (the common-triangle case).

M. T. Homer Reid

I present an accurate and efficient technique for numerical evaluation of singular 6-dimensional integrals over tetrahedon-product domains, with applications to calculation of Galerkin matrix elements for discretized volume-integral-equation (VIE) solvers using Schaubert-Wilton-Glisson (SWG) and other tetrahedral basis functions. My method extends the generalized Taylor-Duffy strategy---used to handle the singular \textit{triangle}-product integrals arising in discretized surface-integral-equation (SIE) formulations---to the tetrahedron-product case; it effects an exact transformation of a singular 6-dimensional integral to an nonsingular lower-dimensional integral that may be evaluated by simple numerical cubature The method is highly general and may---with the aid of automatic code generation facilitated by computer-algebra systems---be applied to a wide variety of singular integrals arising in various VIE formulations with various types of tetrahedral basis function, of which I present several examples. To demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of my method, I apply it to the calculation of matrix elements for the volume electric-field integral equation (VEFIE) discretized with SWG basis functions, where the method yields 12-digit or higher accuracy with low computational cost---an improvement of many orders of magnitude compared to existing techniques.