hp Boundary element modeling of the external human auditory system––goal-oriented adaptivity with multiple load vectors Original Research Article

In this paper we consider two common problems encountered in boundary element analysis of acoustical scattering problems. The first is the need to resolve the solution only in a finite subregion of the domain, instead of resolving the solution in a global energy norm. This could occur, for example, when attempting to match experimental data that involved microphones placed at discrete points of the domain. The second unresolved issue is multiple right-hand sides, which correspond to rotating angles of incidence of an impinging plane or spherical wave. Constructing a separate adaptive mesh for each right-hand side would quickly become impractical. In this work we present a goal-oriented adaptivity procedure for resolving the boundary element solution only in a finite subregion of the domain, and we implement the method within a multiple right-hand sides context, so that the resulting meshes will be optimized not only for the selected subdomain, but also for all right-hand sides simultaneously. All of this work is part of a general effort to model the external human auditory system. More extensive results on using the above methodology for computing the head-related transfer function of a typical human head/ear will be presented in a forthcoming publication.