Analysis of Dual Null Field Methods for Dirichlet Problems of Laplace’s Equation in Elliptic Domains with Elliptic Holes: Bypassing Degenerate Scales

Abstract

Dual techniques have been used in many engineering papers to deal with singularity and ill-conditioning of the boundary element method (BEM). Our efforts are paid to explore theoretical analysis, including error and stability analysis, to fill up the gap between theory and computation. Our group provides the analysis for Laplace’s equation in circular domains with circular holes and in this paper for elliptic domains with elliptic holes. The explicit algebraic equations of the first kind and second kinds of the null field method (NFM) and the interior field method (IFM) have been studied extensively. Traditionally, the first and the second kinds of the NFM are used for the Dirichlet and Neumann problems, respectively. To bypass the degenerate scales of Dirichlet problems, the second and the first kinds of the NFM are used for the exterior and the interior boundaries, simultaneously, called the dual null field method (DNFM) in this paper. Optimal convergence rates and good stability for the DNFM can be achieved from our analysis. This paper is the first part of the study and mostly concerns theoretical aspects; the second part is expected to be devoted to numerical experiments.

Keywords

• boundary element method
• degenerate scales
• elliptic domains
• dual null field methods
• error analysis
• stability analysis