A high frequency boundary element method for scattering by a class of nonconvex obstacles (Q2017577)

The aim of this paper is to propose and analyse a hybrid numerical-asymptotic boundary element method for the solution of problems of high frequency acoustic scattering by a class of sound-soft nonconvex polygons. The approximation space is enriched with carefully chosen oscillatory basis functions; these are selected via a study of the high frequency asymptotic behaviour of the solution. The authors demonstrate a rigorous error analysis, supported by numerical examples. To achieve any desired accuracy it is sufficient for the number of degrees of freedom to grow only in proportion to the logarithm of the frequency as the frequency increases, in contrast to the at least linear growth required by conventional methods. This appears to be the first such numerical analysis result for any problem of scattering by a nonconvex obstacle. Numerical examples demonstrate that the predicted exponential convergence of the authors' \(hp\) scheme is achieved in practice.