Sebastian Acosta

Vianey Villamizar, Sebastian Acosta, Blake Dastrup

We devise a new high order local absorbing boundary condition (ABC) for radiating problems and scattering of time-harmonic acoustic waves from obstacles of arbitrary shape. By introducing an artificial boundary $S$ enclosing the scatterer, the original unbounded domain $Ω$ is decomposed into a bounded computational domain $Ω^{-}$ and an exterior unbounded domain $Ω^{+}$. Then, we define interface conditions at the artificial boundary $S$, from truncated versions of the well-known Wilcox and Karp farfield expansion representations of the exact solution in the exterior region $Ω^{+}$. As a result, we obtain a new local absorbing boundary condition (ABC) for a bounded problem on $Ω^{-}$, which effectively accounts for the outgoing behavior of the scattered field. Contrary to the low order absorbing conditions previously defined, the order of the error induced by this ABC can easily match the order of the numerical method in $Ω^{-}$. We accomplish this by simply adding as many terms as needed to the truncated farfield expansions of Wilcox or Karp. The convergence of these expansions guarantees that the order of approximation of the new ABC can be increased arbitrarily without having to enlarge the radius of the artificial boundary. We include numerical results in two and three dimensions which demonstrate the improved accuracy and simplicity of this new formulation when compared to other absorbing boundary conditions.

Sebastian Acosta

The formulation of the on-surface radiation condition (OSRC) is extended to handle wave scattering problems in the presence of multiple obstacles. The new multiple-OSRC simultaneously accounts for the outgoing behavior of the wave fields, as well as, the multiple wave reflections between the obstacles. Like boundary integral equations (BIE), this method leads to a reduction in dimensionality (from volume to surface) of the discretization region. However, as opposed to BIE, the proposed technique leads to boundary integral equations with smooth kernels. Hence, these Fredholm integral equations can be handled accurately and robustly with standard numerical approaches without the need to remove singularities. Moreover, under weak scattering conditions, this approach renders a convergent iterative method which bypasses the need to solve single scattering problems at each iteration. Inherited from the original OSRC, the proposed multiple-OSRC is generally a crude approximate method. If accuracy is not satisfactory, this approach may serve as a good initial guess or as an inexpensive pre-conditioner for Krylov iterative solutions of BIE.

Sebastian Acosta

We formulate a new family of high order on-surface radiation conditions to approximate the outgoing solution to the Helmholtz equation in exterior domains. Motivated by the pseudo-differential expansion of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator developed by Antoine et al. (J. Math. Anal. Appl. 229:184-211, 1999), we design a systematic procedure to apply pseudo-differential symbols of arbitrarily high order. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed method for solving both the Dirichlet and the Neumann boundary value problems. Possible improvements and extensions are also discussed.

Sebastian Acosta, Charles Puelz, Beatrice Riviere et al.

Mathematical modeling at the level of the full cardiovascular system requires the numerical approximation of solutions to a one-dimensional nonlinear hyperbolic system describing flow in a single vessel. This model is often simulated by computationally intensive methods like finite elements and discontinuous Galerkin, while some recent applications require more efficient approaches (e.g. for real-time clinical decision support, phenomena occurring over multiple cardiac cycles, iterative solutions to optimization/inverse problems, and uncertainty quantification). Further, the high speed of pressure waves in blood vessels greatly restricts the time step needed for stability in explicit schemes. We address both cost and stability by presenting an efficient and unconditionally stable method for approximating solutions to diagonal nonlinear hyperbolic systems. Theoretical analysis of the algorithm is given along with a comparison of our method to a discontinuous Galerkin implementation. Lastly, we demonstrate the utility of the proposed method by implementing it on small and large arterial networks of vessels whose elastic and geometrical parameters are physiologically relevant.