A closed form for low-order panel methods

Published in Advances in Engineering Software Vol. 31 (5), pp. 347-353, 2000
doi: 10.1016/S0965-9978(99)00060-5

Abstract

A closed form for the computation of the dipolar and monopolar influence coefficients related to a low-order panel method is shown. The flow problem is formulated by means of a three-dimensional potential model; the method of discretization is based on the Morino formulation for the perturbation velocity potential. On the body surface this representation reduces to an integral equation with the source (or monopolar) and the doublet (or dipolar) densities. The former is found by application of the boundary condition, and the latter is the unknown over the surface of the body. The lower panel method is used for the analytical integrations of the monopolar and dipolar influence coefficients, with special attention to avoid a logarithmic singularity in the monopolar matrix when flat fairly structured meshes that are common in ship-wave calculations are used.