New Higher-Order Mass-Lumped Tetrahedral Elements for Wave Propagation Modelling
For computational wave propagation, this provides more efficient finite element methods with reduced computational cost while maintaining accuracy.
The authors developed a less restrictive accuracy condition for mass-lumped tetrahedral elements, enabling new elements of degrees 2-4 with fewer nodes (e.g., 15 vs 23 for degree-2, 32 vs 50 for degree-3) and achieving optimal convergence and higher efficiency in wave propagation modeling.
We present a new accuracy condition for the construction of continuous mass-lumped elements. This condition is less restrictive than the one currently used and enabled us to construct new mass-lumped tetrahedral elements of degrees 2 to 4. The new degree-2 and degree-3 tetrahedral elements require 15 and 32 nodes per element, respectively, while currently, these elements require 23 and 50 nodes, respectively. The new degree-4 elements require 60, 61 or 65 nodes per element. Tetrahedral elements of this degree had not been found yet. We prove that our accuracy condition results in a mass-lumped finite element method that converges with optimal order in the $L^2$-norm and energy-norm. A dispersion analysis and several numerical tests confirm that our elements maintain the optimal order of accuracy and show that the new mass-lumped tetrahedral elements are more efficient than the current ones.