Elastic Wave Propagation Analysis Using the Space-Time Discontinuous Galerkin Quadrature Element Method

Abstract

Wave propagation in elastic solids is analyzed by a space-time discontinuous Galerkin quadrature element method. First, the space-time quadrature element is conveniently formulated based on the space-time discontinuous Galerkin formulation. This method treats both the spatial and temporal domains in a unified manner, enabling it to handle not only structured space-time meshes but also unstructured ones. It effectively captures discontinuities or sharp gradients in the solution. To transform the formulation into a system of algebraic equations, the Gauss-Lobatto quadrature rule and the differential quadrature analog are utilized. High-order elements are constructed simply by increasing the order of integration and differentiation without the laborious construction of shape functions. Then, dispersion analysis is conducted for one- and two-dimensional elements. The analysis reveals that as the Courant number decreases, the total dispersion error monotonically converges to the spatial dispersion error, which can be reduced by increasing the element order. Additionally, high-order elements nearly eliminate numerical anisotropy in different directions. Finally, several numerical examples of elastic wave propagation validate the method’s effectiveness and high accuracy.