Time Domain Boundary Element Method - an Acoustic Engineer's Perspective

Dr. Jonathan Hargreaves is an acoustics researcher from the University of Salford Acoustics Research Centre (ARC) in the UK. His research interests include time-domain Boundary Element Method (BEM), digital signal processing, and auralisation. In July 2007 he completed his PhD entitled "Time Domain Boundary Element Methods for Room Acoustics", and since then has continued his work at Salford as a research and teaching fellow.

Jonathan's contributions to the study of time-domain BEM have primarily comprised the development of novel boundary condition implementations; in particular frequency dependent examples characterised by a surface reflection coefficient. This lecture will focus on detailing these approaches, plus discussion of the merits of utilising surface reflection versus impedance in the time domain.

The current state of UK acoustics research, its key themes, and the attitude and strategic direction of the ARC will then be discussed, with special focus on applications driving numerical modelling. Outline of some key facilities and projects at Salford will be included where relevant. Leading on from these applications, Jonathan will suggest some avenues for future time-domain BEM research which would interest the academic acoustics community and have real-world impact.