Acoustic infinite elements

Abaqus provides acoustic infinite elements for modeling boundary value problems defined in unbounded domains or problems in which the region of interest is small in size compared to the surrounding medium.

This page discusses:

See Also
In Other Guides
Acoustic, Shock, and Coupled Acoustic-Structural Analysis
Infinite Elements

ProductsAbaqus/StandardAbaqus/Explicit

A submarine deep underwater, for example, may experience loads due to the fluid and radiate sound into the fluid, as if the ocean were infinitely large. The extent to which an exterior fluid may be considered “unbounded” or “infinite” depends on the number of wavelengths between the body or region of interest and the nearest boundary: the higher this number, the more likely that the influence of these boundaries is small enough to be neglected. For example, the effect of the surrounding fluid on a submarine in a relatively shallow harbor may be like an infinite medium at high frequencies, but the harbor bottom and free surface may exert an effect at lower frequencies. Similarly, a loudspeaker in air may radiate sound from the high-frequency tweeter as if the surrounding air were infinite, but the effects of the walls of the room may affect the radiation pattern of the low-frequency woofer.

Abaqus provides a range of features to model exterior fluid effects. All of the surrounding fluid may be modeled with finite elements; clearly, this is practical only if the extent of the surrounding medium is small. At the next level of sophistication, the user may model a small region of fluid and apply a simple radiation boundary condition to the terminating surface. These radiation boundary conditions are derived using simple models of waves passing through a boundary. Abaqus provides several alternative formulations of these boundary conditions (see Coupled acoustic-structural medium analysis and Acoustic, Shock, and Coupled Acoustic-Structural Analysis). These radiation conditions do not add degrees of freedom to the system and do not affect the symmetry of the matrix.

Finally, acoustic infinite elements are provided, which allow the retained finite element fluid region to be even smaller, with similar accuracy. The acoustic infinite element formulation differs from the radiation boundary condition formulation in several key respects. In the infinite elements the infinite exterior is subdivided into elements, and a method of weighted residuals statement is enforced on the elements in a manner entirely analogous to the usual finite element method. Degrees of freedom, corresponding to interpolation functions in the infinite direction, are added to the overall matrix system. The method of weighted residuals used in Abaqus results in nonsymmetric infinite element matrices, so the relative cost of these elements is higher than that of a simple radiation boundary condition. However, the accuracy of the infinite elements is sufficiently high that the finite element region can be reduced considerably, offsetting the cost in many applications.