Boundary and interface methods for energy stable finite difference discretizations of the dynamic beam equation

Abstract: We consider energy stable summation by parts finite difference methods (SBP-FD) for the homogeneous and piecewise homogeneous dynamic beam equation (DBE). Previously the constant coefficient problem has been solved with SBP-FD together with penalty terms (SBP-SAT) to impose boundary conditions. In this work we revisit this problem and compare SBP-SAT to the projection method (SBP-P). We also consider the DBE with discontinuous coefficients and present novel SBP-SAT, SBP-P and hybrid SBP-SAT-P discretizations for imposing interface conditions. Numerical experiments show that all methods considered are similar in terms of accuracy, but that SBP-P can be more computationally efficient (less restrictive time step requirement for explicit time integration methods) for both the constant and piecewise constant coefficient problems.