Analysis of acoustic scattering in fluids and solids by the method of fundamental solutions

The method of fundamental solutions (MFS) is a boundary method for the numerical solution of certain elliptic boundary value problems. In the MFS, the approximate solution is a linear combination of fundamental solutions of the governing partial differential equation, with singularities placed outside the domain of the problem. In the present paper, the MFS is applied to acoustic scattering in fluids. The singularities are allowed to move during the solution process from arbitrary locations to more optimal locations. Numerical results demonstrate that the "fictitious eigenfrequency" difficulty encountered with the boundary element method (BEM) is not present in the MFS. In addition, MFS results obtained by the use of fixed singularities are presented for scattering of waves in elastic solids.