A Novel Triangular Element with Continuous Nodal Acoustic Pressure Gradient for Acoustic Scattering Problems

To improve the performance of the standard finite element (FE) method in acoustic simulation, a novel triangular element with continuous nodal acoustic pressure gradient (FEM-T3-CNG) is presented to solve two-dimensional underwater acoustic scattering problems. In this FEM-T3-CNG model, the local approximation (LA) is represented by using the least-squares (LS) scheme, and the standard FE shape functions are employed to satisfy the partition of unity (PU) concept. In order to possess the important delta Kronecker property, the constrained orthonormalized LS (CO-LS) is utilized to construct the hybrid nodal shape functions. Incorporating the present FEM-T3-CNG element with the proper nonreflecting boundary condition, the two-dimensional underwater acoustic scattering problems in the infinite domain could be solved ultimately. The numerical results show that the present FEM-T3-CNG element behaves much better than the standard FEM-T3 element in terms of computation accuracy and can be regarded as a good alternative approach in exterior acoustic computation.