Efficient block diagonal preconditioner for boundary element method in acoustics

An efficient preconditioner for iterative solution of the boundary integral equations for acoustic problems is presented. This method employs the improved Burton-Miller formulation overcome non-unique problems, and avoids the numerical difficulty of evaluating the hypersingular integral. The resulting matrix equation is solved iteratively with the generalized minimal residual method (GMRES) and an efficient block diagonal preconditioner is applied to accelerate the convergence. Numerical results demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the developed method for acoustic problems. The fast convergence properties indicate the developed method would be a promising application of the fast multipole boundary element method for large-scale acoustic problems.