An efficient and highly accurate solver for multi-body acoustic scattering problems involving rotationally symmetric scatterers

A numerical method for solving the equations modeling acoustic scattering in three dimensions is presented. The method is capable of handling several dozen scatterers, each of which is several wave-lengths long, on a personal work station. Even for geometries involving cavities, solutions accurate to seven digits or better were obtained. The method relies on a Boundary Integral Equation formulation of the scattering problem, discretized using a high-order accurate Nyström method. A hybrid iterative/direct solver is used in which a local scattering matrix for each body is computed, and then GMRES, accelerated by the Fast Multipole Method, is used to handle reflections between the scatterers. The main limitation of the method described is that it currently applies only to scattering bodies that are rotationally symmetric.