A new fast multipole boundary element method for two dimensional acoustic problems

A new fast multipole boundary element method (BEM) is presented in this paper for solving large-scale two dimensional (2D) acoustic problems based on the improved Burton–Miller formulation. This algorithm has several important improvements. The fast multipole BEM employs the improved Burton–Miller formulation, and successfully overcomes the non-uniqueness difficulty associated with the conventional BEM for exterior acoustic problems. The improved Burton–Miller formulation contains only weakly singular integrals, and avoids the numerical difficulties associated to the evaluation of the hypersingular integral, it leads to the numerical implementations more efficient and straightforward. Furthermore, the fast multipole method (FMM) and the approximate inverse preconditioned generalized minimum residual method (GMRES) iterative solver are adopted to greatly improve the overall computational efficiency. The numerical examples with Neumann boundary conditions are presented that clearly demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the developed fast multipole BEM for solving large-scale 2D acoustic problems in a wide range of frequencies.