On the convergence of 2D and 3D finite element/boundary element analysis for periodic acoustic waveguides

Finite Element Analysis/Boundary Element Methods (the so-called FEA/BEM) are a key-tool for the simulation of elastic waveguides and transducers used for the design of RF filters, sources and sensors. We analyze the optimal convergence conditions of corresponding computations, showing the interest of 2^nd degree interpolation to improve both the accuracy and the delay of such calculations. We also propose a general and efficient approach to integrate boundary integrals of 3D problems, allowing to minimize the computation delay of the BEM part, the most costly of the whole model.