This essay shows a two dimensional implementation of the finite element method for the Westervelt equation. To do this the finite element method is first applied to the linear wave equation, then to non-linear diffusion and finally to the Westervelt equation. Both an element by element and a faster vectorized implementation are given for the finite element method. To verify the numerical solution two analytical solutions are used. The first is a one dimensional wave and the second a circularly symmetric wave.

We found that the two-dimensional implementation was successful in computing the Westervelt equation. The error of the solution scales with the mesh size with a power of around 1.7. It was also found that the time step used to compute the solution needs to be small enough for the implementation to converge.