Simulations of Acoustic Wave Phenomena Using High-Order Finite Difference Approximations

Numerical studies of hyperbolic initial boundary value problems (IBVP) in several space dimensions have been performed using high-order finite difference approximations. It is shown that for wave propagation problems, where the wavelengths are small compared to the domain and long time integrations are needed, high-order schemes are superior to low-order ones. In fact, in two dimensions an acoustic lens is simulated, leading to large scale computations where high-order methods and powerful parallel computers are necessary if an accurate solution is to be obtained.