NSI-IBP: A General Numerical Singular Integral Method via Integration by Parts

Abstract

A general framework of Numerical Singular Integrals (NSI) method based on the Integration By Parts (IBP) has been developed for integrals involving singular and nearly singular integrands, or NSI-IBP. Through a general integration by parts formula and by choosing some analytically integrable function to approximate the original integrand, various well-known integration by parts methods can be derived. Rigorous mathematical derivations have been performed to transform the original singular or nearly singular integrals into non-singular integrals that can be computed efficiently, along with the boundary values added. What’s more important, the NSI-IBP method works well even when the exact form of the singular integrand is not known. Criteria on how to choose the appropriate function with a known analytical integral that closely approximates the original integrand have been outlined and explained. Numerical recipe has been presented to apply the proposed NSI-IBP. Numerical experiments have been carried out on various singular integrals such as the power-law decaying integrand, the logarithmic function, and their hybrid products. It can be shown that various relative accuracy up to $10^{-15}$ can be achieved, even the exact singular function is not known. Finally, the nearly singular integrals involving the scalar Green’s function have been evaluated for both electrostatics applications and Computational Electromagnetics (CEM) applications.