Adaptive cross-approximation applied to the solution of system of equations and post-processing for 3D elastostatic problems using the boundary element method

We present the hierarchical matrix (H-matrix) technique combined with the adaptive cross-approximation (ACA) applied to a three-dimensional (3D) elastostatic problem using the boundary element method (BEM). This is used in structural geology and geomechanics for the evaluation of the deformation and perturbed stress field associated with surfaces of displacement discontinuity. Such optimization significantly reduces (i) the time and memory needed for the resolution of the system of equations, but more importantly (ii) the time needed for the post-processing at observation points where the deformation and the perturbed stress field are evaluated. Specifically, it is shown that the H-matrix structure used with the ACA, clearly captures the kernel smoothness during the post-processing stage according to the field point positions, and optimizes the computation accordingly. Combined with the parallelization on multi-core processors, this technique allows intensive computations to be done on personal desktop and laptop computers. Numerical simulations are presented, showing the advantages of such optimizations compared to the standard method