Time-domain implementation of an impedance boundary condition with boundary layer correction

Abstract

A time-domain boundary condition is derived that accounts for the acoustic impedance of a thin boundary layer over an impedance boundary, based on the asymptotic frequency-domain boundary condition of Brambley [2011, AIAA J. 49(6), pp. 1272–1282]. A finite-difference reference implementation of this condition is presented and carefully validated against both an analytic solution and a discrete dispersion analysis for a simple test case. The discrete dispersion analysis enables the distinction between real physical instabilities and artificial numerical instabilities. The cause of the latter is suggested to be a combination of the real physical instabilities present and the aliasing and artificial zero group velocity of finite-difference schemes. It is suggested that these are general properties of any numerical discretization of an unstable system. Existing numerical filters are found to be inadequate to remove these artificial instabilities as they have a too wide pass band. The properties of numerical filters required to address this issue are discussed and a number of selective filters are presented that may prove useful in general. These filters are capable of removing only the artificial numerical instabilities, allowing the reference implementation to correctly reproduce the stability properties of the analytic solution.