A Stiffness Reduction Method for efficient absorption of waves at boundaries for use in commercial Finite Element codes

Commercially available Finite Element packages are being used increasingly for modelling elastic wave propagation problems. Demand for improved capability has resulted in a drive to maximise the efficiency of the solver whilst maintaining a reliable solution. Modelling waves in unbound elastic media to high levels of accuracy presents a challenge for commercial packages, requiring the removal of unwanted reflections from model boundaries. For time domain explicit solvers, Absorbing Layers by Increasing Damping (ALID) have proven successful because they offer flexible application to modellers and, unlike the Perfectly Matched Layers (PMLs) approach, they are readily implemented in most commercial Finite Element software without requiring access to the source code. However, despite good overall performance, this technique requires the spatial model to extend significantly outside the domain of interest. Here, a Stiffness Reduction Method (SRM) has been developed that operates within a significantly reduced spatial domain. The technique is applied by altering the damping and stiffness matrices of the system, inducing decay of any incident wave. Absorbing region variables are expressed as a function of known model constants, helping to apply the technique to generic elastodynamic problems. The SRM has been shown to perform significantly better than ALID, with results confirmed by both numerical and analytical means.