A numerical study of a spectral problem in solid‐fluid type structures

This article presents a numerical study of a spectral problem that models the vibrations of a solid–fluid structure. It is a quadratic eigenvalue problem involving incompressible Stokes equations. In its numerical approximation we use Lagrange finite elements. To approximate the velocity, degree 2 polynomials on triangles are used, and for the pressure, degree 1 polynomials. The numerical results obtained confirm the theory, as they show in particular that the known theoretical bound for the maximum number of nonreal eigenvalues admitted by such a system is optimal. The results also take account of the dependence of vibration frequencies with respect to determined physical parameters, which have a bearing on the model. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.