Isogeometric Analysis of Acoustic Scattering using Infinite Elements

Isogeometric analysis (IGA) has proven to be an improvement on the classical finite element method (FEM) in several fields, including structural mechanics and fluid dynamics. In this paper, the performance of IGA coupled with the infinite element method (IEM) for some acoustic scattering problems is investigated. In particular, the simple problem of acoustic scattering by a rigid sphere, and the scattering of acoustic waves by an elastic spherical shell with fluid domains both inside and outside, representing a full acoustic-structure interaction (ASI) problem. Finally, a mock shell and a simplified submarine benchmark are investigated. The numerical examples include comparisons between IGA and the FEM. Our main finding is that the usage of IGA significantly increases the accuracy compared to the usage of FEM due to increased inter-element continuity of the spline basis functions.