Applications of finite-difference time-domain for architectural acoustics consulting

Abstract

Acoustics consultants have many tools in their arsenal to evaluate and design rooms and architectural elements; the computational resources available to this point have made the use of wave-propagation models impractical for the common user. Threshold acoustics has found it both useful and now computationally feasible to supplement more traditional, geometric analysis with the simulation of wave-propagation using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD). Our group has developed first-order leapfrog FDTD routines in MATLAB for simulating wave propagation in an isotropic medium in two- and three-dimenision with perfectly matched layers being the boundary condition. The placement of solid elements within the test space allows analysis of arbitrary geometries. For additional computational power, our group has utilized GPU computing clusters available through Amazon Web Services accessed directly through MATLAB. Our method is based on the simulation of an impulse response and subsequent analysis of the impulse response consistent with traditional in situ testing methods. Applications to date include analysis of the scattering behavior of acoustically shaped surfaces and evaluation of the array behavior of architectural reflector panels.

The Lattice Boltzmann Method Using Parallel Computation: A Great Potential Solution for Various Complicated Acoustic Problems

“…In these methods, waves' physical phenomena are modeled mathematically in the form of partial differential equations and solved numerically. The numerical methods included in the wave-based methods and which are often used are the finite-differences time-domain method (FDTD) [1][2][3][4], the finite element method (FEM) [5,6], and the finite volume method (FVM) [7,8]. These methods have heavy computational loads, especially FEM, which need a large matrices solver.…”