Boundary element methods for acoustic scattering by fractal screens (Q2022337)

Boundary element methods (BEM) for scattering problems by fractal screens are studied in this article. The main idea is to approximate the fractal screen by a sequence of smoother screens (prefractals) where well-posedness of the corresponding boundary integral equations is known and, consequently, classical methods like Galerkin BEM can be used for the discretization. Two types of fractal screens are considered: (i) sets with fractal boundaries and (ii) compact fractal sets with empty interior. The (numerical) analysis of boundary integral equations on fractal sets requires various non-standard results (e.g., Sobolev spaces defined on screens) which are given in Sections 2--3. Convergence results for sound-soft screen problems are found in Sections 4--5. The case where the fractal screen is a fixed point of an iterative function system is studied in detail. The main results are Theorem 5.2 and Theorem 5.3 where convergence of the Galerkin BEM is proven for the two types (i), (ii). Section 6 contains various examples of screens, namely, Cantor sets in 2D and 3D, the Sierpinski triangle and snowflakes. Numerical experiments for these examples are found in Section 7.