SOME PROBLEMS WITH THE METHOD OF FUNDAMENTAL SOLUTION USING RADIAL BASIS FUNCTIONS

The present work describes the application of the method of fundamental solutions （MFS） along with the analog equation method （AEM） and radial basis function （RBF） approximation for solving the 2D isotropic and anisotropic Helmholtz problems with different wave numbers. The AEM is used to convert the original governing equation into the classical Poisson＇s equation, and the MFS and RBF approximations are used to derive the homogeneous and particular solutions, respectively. Finally, the satisfaction of the solution consisting of the homogeneous and particular parts to the related governing equation and boundary conditions can produce a system of linear equations, which can be solved with the singular value decomposition （SVD） technique. In the computation, such crucial factors related to the MFS-RBF as the location of the virtual boundary, the differential and integrating strategies, and the variation of shape parameters in multi-quadric （MQ） are fully analyzed to provide useful reference.

The Localized Method of Fundamental Solution for Two Dimensional Signorini Problems

In this work,the localized method of fundamental solution(LMFS)is extended to Signorini problem.Unlike the traditional fundamental solution(MFS),the LMFS approximates the field quantity at each node by using the field quantities at the adjacent nodes.The idea of the LMFS is similar to the localized domain type method.The fictitious boundary nodes are proposed to impose the boundary condition and governing equations at each node to formulate a sparse matrix.The inequality boundary condition of Signorini problem is solved indirectly by introducing nonlinear complementarity problem function(NCP-function).Numerical examples are carried out to validate the reliability and effectiveness of the LMFS in solving Signorini problems.

Electroelastic Analysis of Two-Dimensional Piezoelectric Structures by the Localized Method of Fundamental Solutions

Accurate and efficient analysis of the coupled electroelastic behavior of piezoelectric structures is a challenging task in the community of computational mechanics.During the past few decades,the method of fundamental solutions(MFS)has emerged as a popular and well-established meshless boundary collocation method for the numerical solution of many engineering applications.The classical MFS formulation,however,leads to dense and non-symmetric coefficient matrices which will be computationally expensive for large-scale engineering simulations.In this paper,a localized version of the MFS(LMFS)is devised for electroelastic analysis of twodimensional(2D)piezoelectric structures.In the LMFS,the entire computational domain is divided into a set of overlapping small sub-domains where the MFS-based approximation and the moving least square(MLS)technique are employed.Different to the classical MFS,the LMFS will produce banded and sparse coefficient matrices which makes the method very attractive for large-scale simulations.Preliminary numerical experiments illustrate that the present LMFM is very promising for coupled electroelastic analysis of piezoelectric materials.

Localized Method of Fundamental Solutions for Acoustic Analysis Inside a Car Cavity with Sound-Absorbing Material

This paper documents the first attempt to apply a localized method of fundamental solutions(LMFS)to the acoustic analysis of car cavity containing soundabsorbing materials.The LMFS is a recently developed meshless approach with the merits of being mathematically simple,numerically accurate,and requiring less computer time and storage.Compared with the traditional method of fundamental solutions(MFS)with a full interpolation matrix,the LMFS can obtain a sparse banded linear algebraic system,and can circumvent the perplexing issue of fictitious boundary encountered in the MFS for complex solution domains.In the LMFS,only circular or spherical fictitious boundary is involved.Based on these advantages,the method can be regarded as a competitive alternative to the standard method,especially for high-dimensional and large-scale problems.Three benchmark numerical examples are provided to verify the effectiveness and performance of the present method for the solution of car cavity acoustic problems with impedance conditions.

Localized Method of Fundamental Solutions for Three-Dimensional Elasticity Problems: Theory

A localized version of the method of fundamental solution(LMFS)is devised in this paper for the numerical solutions of three-dimensional(3D)elasticity problems.The present method combines the advantages of high computational efficiency of localized discretization schemes and the pseudo-spectral convergence rate of the classical MFS formulation.Such a combination will be an important improvement to the classical MFS for complicated and large-scale engineering simulations.Numerical examples with up to 100,000 unknowns can be solved without any difficulty on a personal computer using the developed methodologies.The advantages,disadvantages and potential applications of the proposed method,as compared with the classical MFS and boundary element method(BEM),are discussed.

A Practical Algorithm for Determining the Optimal Pseudo-Boundary in the Method of Fundamental Solutions

One of the main difficulties in the application of the method of fundamental solutions(MFS)is the determination of the position of the pseudo-boundary on which are placed the singularities in terms of which the approximation is expressed.In this work,we propose a simple practical algorithm for determining an estimate of the pseudo-boundary which yields the most accurate MFS approximation when the method is applied to certain boundary value problems.Several numerical examples are provided.

Localized space-tim e method of fundamental solutions for three-dimensional transient diffusion problem

A localized space-time method of fundamental solutions(LSTMFS)is extended for solving three-dimensional transient diffusion problems in this paper.The interval segmentation in temporal direction is developed for the accurate simulation of long-time-dependent diffusion problems.In the LSTMFS,the whole space-time domain with nodes arranged i divided into a series of overlapping subdomains with a simple geometry.In each subdomain,the conventional method of fundamental solutions is utilized and the coefficients associated with the considered domain can be explicitly determined.By calculating a combined sparse matrix system,the value at any node inside the space-time domain can be obtained.Numerical experi-ments demonstrate that high accuracy and efficiency can be simultaneously achieved via the LSTMFS,even for the problems defined on a long-time and quite complex computational domain.

Domain-Decomposition Localized Method of Fundamental Solutions for Large-Scale Heat Conduction in Anisotropic Layered Materials

The localized method of fundamental solutions(LMFS)is a relatively new meshless boundary collocation method.In the LMFS,the global MFS approxima-tion which is expensive to evaluate is replaced by local MFS formulation defined in a set of overlapping subdomains.The LMFS algorithm therefore converts differential equations into sparse rather than dense matrices which are much cheaper to calcu-late.This paper makes thefirst attempt to apply the LMFS,in conjunction with a domain-decomposition technique,for the numerical solution of steady-state heat con-duction problems in two-dimensional(2D)anisotropic layered materials.Here,the layered material is decomposed into several subdomains along the layer-layer inter-faces,and in each of the subdomains,the solution is approximated by using the LMFS expansion.On the subdomain interface,compatibility of temperatures and heatfluxes are imposed.Preliminary numerical experiments illustrate that the proposed domain-decomposition LMFS algorithm is accurate,stable and computationally efficient for the numerical solution of large-scale multi-layered materials.

Application of Method of Fundamental Solutions in Solving Potential Flow Problems for Ship Motion Prediction

A novel panel-free approach based on the method of fundamental solutions (MFS) is proposed to solve the potential flow for predicting ship motion responses in the frequency domain according to strip theory. Compared with the conventional boundary element method (BEM), MFS is a desingularized, panel-free and integration-free approach. As a result, it is mathematically simple and easy for programming. The velocity potential is described by radial basis function (RBF) approximations and any degree of continuity of the velocity potential gradient can be obtained. Desingularization is achieved through collating singularities on a pseudo boundary outside the real fluid domain. Practical implementation and numerical characteristics of the MFS for solving the potential flow problem concerning ship hydrodynamics are elaborated through the computation of a 2D rectangular section. Then, the current method is further integrated with frequency domain strip theory to predict the heave and pitch responses of a containership and a very large crude carrier (VLCC) in regular head waves. The results of both ships agree well with the 3D frequency domain panel method and experimental data. Thus, the correctness and usefulness of the proposed approach are proved. We hope that this paper will serve as a motivation for other researchers to apply the MFS to various challenging problems in the field of ship hydrodynamics.

The Method of Fundamental Solution for a Radially Symmetric Heat Conduction Problem with Variable Coefficient

We consider an inverse heat conduction problem with variable coefficient on an annulus domain.In many practice applications,we cannot know the initial temperature during heat process,therefore we consider a non-characteristic Cauchy problem for the heat equation.The method of fundamental solutions is applied to solve this problem.Due to ill-posedness of this problem,we first discretize the problem and then regularize it in the form of discrete equation.Numerical tests are conducted for showing the effectiveness of the proposed method.

The Method of Fundamental Solutions for Solving Exterior Axisymmetric Helmholtz Problems with High Wave-Number

In this paper,we investigate the method of fundamental solutions(MFS)for solving exterior Helmholtz problems with high wave-number in axisymmetric domains.Since the coefficientmatrix in the linear system resulting fromtheMFS approximation has a block circulant structure,it can be solved by the matrix decomposition algorithm and fast Fourier transform for the fast computation of large-scale problems and meanwhile saving computer memory space.Several numerical examples are provided to demonstrate its applicability and efficacy in two and three dimensional domains.

The Method of Fundamental Solutions for Solving Convection-Diffusion Equations with Variable Coefficients

A meshless method based on the method of fundamental solutions(MFS)is proposed to solve the time-dependent partial differential equations with variable coefficients.The proposed method combines the time discretization and the onestage MFS for spatial discretization.In contrast to the traditional two-stage process,the one-stage MFS approach is capable of solving a broad spectrum of partial differential equations.The numerical implementation is simple since both closed-form approximate particular solution and fundamental solution are easy to find than the traditional approach.The numerical results show that the one-stage approach is robust and stable.

Galerkin Formulations of the Method of Fundamental Solutions

In this paper,we introduce two Galerkin formulations of theMethod of Fundamental Solutions(MFS).In contrast to the collocation formulation of the MFS,the proposed Galerkin formulations involve the evaluation of integrals over the boundary of the domain under consideration.On the other hand,these formulations lead to some desirable properties of the stiffness matrix such as symmetry in certain cases.Several numerical examples are considered by these methods and their various features compared.

The Method of Fundamental Solutions for Steady-State Heat Conduction in Nonlinear Materials

The steady-state heat conduction in heat conductors with temperature dependent thermal conductivity and mixed boundary conditions involving radiation is investigated using the method of fundamental solutions.Various computational issues related to the method are addressed and numerical results are presented and discussed for problems in two and three dimensions.

Mathematical modeling and numerical computation of the effective interfacial conditions for Stokes flow on an arbitrarily rough solid surface

The present work is concerned with a two-dimensional(2D)Stokes flow through a channel bounded by two parallel solid walls.The distance between the walls may be arbitrary,and the surface of one of the walls can be arbitrarily rough.The main objective of this work consists in homogenizing the heterogeneous interface between the rough wall and fluid so as to obtain an equivalent smooth slippery fluid/solid interface characterized by an effective slip length.To solve the corresponding problem,two efficient numerical approaches are elaborated on the basis of the method of fundamental solution(MFS)and the boundary element methods(BEMs).They are applied to different cases where the fluid/solid interface is periodically or randomly rough.The results obtained by the proposed two methods are compared with those given by the finite element method and some relevant ones reported in the literature.This comparison shows that the two proposed methods are particularly efficient and accurate.

Three Boundary Meshless Methods for Heat Conduction Analysis in Nonlinear FGMs with Kirchhoff and Laplace Transformation

This paper presents three boundary meshless methods for solving problems of steady-state and transient heat conduction in nonlinear functionally graded materials(FGMs).The three methods are,respectively,the method of fundamental solution(MFS),the boundary knot method(BKM),and the collocation Trefftz method(CTM)in conjunction with Kirchhoff transformation and various variable transformations.In the analysis,Laplace transform technique is employed to handle the time variable in transient heat conduction problem and the Stehfest numerical Laplace inversion is applied to retrieve the corresponding time-dependent solutions.The proposed MFS,BKM and CTM are mathematically simple,easyto-programming,meshless,highly accurate and integration-free.Three numerical examples of steady state and transient heat conduction in nonlinear FGMs are considered,and the results are compared with those from meshless local boundary integral equation method(LBIEM)and analytical solutions to demonstrate the effi-ciency of the present schemes.

A Novel Technique for Estimating the Numerical Error in Solving the Helmholtz Equation

In this study,we applied a defined auxiliary problem in a novel error estimation technique to estimate the numerical error in the method of fundamental solutions(MFS)for solving the Helmholtz equation.The defined auxiliary problem is substituted for the real problem,and its analytical solution is generated using the complementary solution set of the governing equation.By solving the auxiliary problem and comparing the solution with the quasianalytical solution,an error curve of the MFS versus the source location parameters can be obtained.Thus,the optimal location parameter can be identified.The convergent numerical solution can be obtained and applied to the case of an unavailable analytical solution condition in the real problem.Consequently,we developed a systematic error estimation scheme to identify an optimal parameter.Through numerical experiments,the optimal location parameter of the source points and the optimal number of source points in the MFS were studied and obtained using the error estimation technique.

A Revisit on the Derivation of the Particular Solution for the Differential Operator ∆^(2) ± λ^(2)

In this paper,we applied the polyharmonic splines as the basis functions to derive particular solutions for the differential operator ∆^(2) ± λ^(2).Similar to the derivation of fundamental solutions,it is non-trivial to derive particular solutions for higher order differential operators.In this paper,we provide a simple algebraic factorization approach to derive particular solutions for these types of differential operators in 2D and 3D.The main focus of this paper is its simplicity in the sense that minimal mathematical background is required for numerically solving higher order partial differential equations such as thin plate vibration.Three numerical examples in both 2D and 3D are given to validate particular solutions we derived.

The Recursive Formulation of Particular Solutions for Some Elliptic PDEs with Polynomial Source Functions

In this paper we develop an efficient meshless method for solving inhomogeneous elliptic partial differential equations.We first approximate the source function by Chebyshev polynomials.We then focus on how to find a polynomial particular solution when the source function is a polynomial.Through the principle of the method of undetermined coefficients and a proper arrangement of the terms for the polynomial particular solution to be determined,the coefficients of the particular solution satisfy a triangular system of linear algebraic equations.Explicit recursive formulas for the coefficients of the particular solutions are derived for different types of elliptic PDEs.The method is further incorporated into the method of fundamental solutions for solving inhomogeneous elliptic PDEs.Numerical results show that our approach is efficient and accurate.

A Regularized Singular Boundary Method for Inverse Cauchy Problem in Three-Dimensional Elastostatics

The application of the singular boundary method(SBM),a relatively new meshless boundary collocation method,to the inverse Cauchy problem in threedimensional(3D)linear elasticity is investigated.The SBM involves a coupling between the non-singular boundary element method(BEM)and the method of fundamental solutions(MFS).The main idea is to fully inherit the dimensionality advantages of the BEM and the meshless and integration-free attributes of the MFS.Due to the boundary-only discretizations and its semi-analytical nature,the method can be viewed as an ideal candidate for the solution of inverse problems.The resulting ill-conditioned algebraic equations is regularized here by employing the first-order Tikhonov regularization technique,while the optimal regularization parameter is determined by the L-curve criterion.Numerical results with both smooth and piecewise smooth geometries show that accurate and stable solution can be obtained with a comparatively large level of noise added into the input data.