DFT modal analysis of spectral element methods for the 2D elastic wave equation

AbstractThe DFT modal analysis is a dispersion analysis technique that transforms the equations of a numerical scheme to the discrete Fourier transform domain sampled in the mesh nodes. This technique provides a natural matching of exact and approximate modes of propagation. We extend this technique to spectral element methods for the 2D isotropic elastic wave equation, by using a Rayleigh quotient approximation of the eigenvalue problem that characterizes the dispersion relation, taking full advantage of the tensor product representation of the spectral element matrices. Numerical experiments illustrate the dependence of dispersion errors on the grid resolution, polynomial degree, and discretization in time. We consider spectral element methods with Chebyshev and Legendre collocation points