Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2013

Comments

Published in: Communications in Numerical Analysis, Vol. 2013.

Abstract

The objective of this work was to find the numerical solution of the Dirichlet problem for the Helmholtz equation fora smooth superellipsoid. The superellipsoid is a shape that is controlled by two parameters. There are some numerical issues in this type of an analysis; any integration method is affected by the wave number k, because of the oscillatory behavior of the fundamental solution. In this case we could only obtain good numerical results for super ellipsoids that were more shaped like super cones, which is a narrow range of super ellipsoids. The formula for these shapes was: x = cos(x)sin(y)n;y = sin(x)sin(y)n; z = cos(y) where n varied from 0.5 to 4. The Helmholtz equation, which is the modified wave equation, is used in many scattering problems. This project was funded by NASA RI Space Grant for testing of the Dirichlet boundary condition for the shape of the superellipsoid. One practical value of all these computations can be getting a shape for the engine nacelles in a ray tracing the space shuttle. We are researching the feasibility of obtaining good convergence results for the superellipsoid surface. It was our view that smaller and lighter wave numbers would reduce computational costs associated with obtaining Galerkin coefficients. In addition, we hoped to significantly reduce the number of terms in the infinite series needed to modify the original integral equation, all of which were achieved in the analysis of the superellipsoid in a finite range. We used the Green’s theorem to solve the integral equation for the boundary of the surface. Previously, multiple surfaces were used to test this method, such as the sphere, ellipsoid, and perturbation of the sphere, pseudosphere and the oval of Cassini Lin and Warnapala [9], Warnapala and Morgan [10].

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