Computer-Aided Acoustics

In the following we will outline the use of computer-aided design models for the analysis of complicated acoustic spaces. The overall goal is to solve the acoustic wave equation for the domain and satisfy the boundary conditions when the geometry is considerably more complicated than can be properly accommodated in analytical solutions. In many studies of sound fields that rely on computational approaches such as the finite element or boundary elementBoundary element methods, the most cumbersome task is in properly describing the geometric details of the domain and boundary conditions. Having the geometry described in a computationally convenient way, the formulation and solution of the equations can be relatively straightforward. The main goal of the following is to provide a brief introduction to the process for formulating and numerically solving the equations based on a geometric description that is readily available through the use of common software used in computer-aided design.