Numerical solutions of Cauchy integral equations and applications

This thesis investigates the polynomial collocation method for the numerical solution of Cauchy type integral equations and the use of those equations and the related numerical techniques to solve two practical problem in Acoustics and Aerodynamics. Chapters I and II include the basic background material required for the development of the main body of the thesis.Chapter I discusses a number of practical problems which can be modelled as a singular integral equations. In Chapter II the theory of those equations is given in great detail. In Chapter III the polynomial collocation method for singular integral equations with constant coefficients is presented. A particular set of collocation points, namely the zeros of the first kind Chebyshev polynomials, is shown to give uniform convergence of the numerical approximation for the cases of the index K = 0. 1. The convergence rate for this method is also given. All these results were obtained under slightly stronger assumptions than the minimum required for the existence of an exact solution. Chapter IV contains a generalization of the results in Chapter III to the case of variable coefficients. In Chapter V an example of a practical problem which results in a singular integral equation and which is successfully solved by the collocation method is described in substantial detail. This problem consists of the interaction of a sound wave with an elastic plate freely suspended in a fluid. It can be modelled by a system of two coupled boundary value problems - the Helmholtz equation and the beam equation. The collocation method is then compared with asymptotic results and a quadrature method due to Miller. In Chapter VI an efficient numerical method is developed for solving problems with discontinuous right-hand sides. Numerical comparison with other methods and possible extensions are also discussed.