Dispersion analysis of triangle-based spectral element methods for elastic wave propagation

We study the numerical dispersion/dissipation of Triangle-based Spectral Element Methods (TSEM) of order N????1 when coupled with the Leap-Frog (LF) finite difference scheme to simulate the elastic wave propagation over a structured triangulation of the 2D physical domain. The analysis relies on the discrete eigenvalue problem resulting from the approximation of the dispersion relation. First, we present semi-discrete dispersion graphs by varying the approximation polynomial degree and the number of discrete points per wavelength. The fully-discrete ones are then obtained by varying also the time step. Numerical results for the TSEM, resp. TSEM-LF, are compared with those of the classical Quadrangle-based Spectral Element Method (QSEM), resp. QSEM-LF.