Accurate 3-D finite element simulation of elastic wave propagation with the combination of explicit and implicit time-integration methods

One of the big issues in finite element solutions of wave propagation problems is the presence of spurious high-frequency oscillations that may lead to divergent results at mesh refinement. The paper deals with the extension of the new two-stage time-integration technique developed in our previous papers to the solution of wave propagation problems with explicit time-integration methods.The explicit central difference method is used for accurate time-integration of the semi-discrete system of elastodynamics at the stage of basic computations and allows spurious high-frequency oscillations. To filter these oscillations, pre- or/and post-processing (the filtering stage) is applied using a few time increments of the implicit time-continuous Galerkin method with large numerical dissipation.A special calibration procedure is used for the selection of the minimum necessary amount of numerical dissipation (in terms of a time increment) at the filtering stage. In contrast to existing approaches that use a time-integration method with the same dissipation (or artificial viscosity) for all time increments, the new technique yields accurate and non-oscillatory results for wave propagation problems without interaction between user and computer code. The solutions of 3-D wave propagation and impact problems show the effectiveness of the new approach.