A Mixed Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Incompressible Magnetohydrodynamics

We introduce and analyze a discontinuous Galerkin method for the numerical discretization of a stationary incompressible magnetohydrodynamics model problem. The fluid unknowns are discretized with inf-sup stable discontinuous P^3_{k}-P_{k-1} elements whereas the magnetic part of the equations is approximated by discontinuous P^3_{k}-P_{k+1} elements. We carry out a complete a-priori error analysis and prove that the energy norm error is convergent of order O(h^k) in the mesh size h. We also show that the method is able to correctly capture and resolve the strongest magnetic singularities in non-convex polyhedral domains. These results are verified in a series of numerical experiments

Robust Finite Elements for linearized Magnetohydrodynamics

We introduce a pressure robust Finite Element Method for the linearized Magnetohydrodynamics equations in three space dimensions, which is provably quasi-robust also in the presence of high fluid and magnetic Reynolds numbers. The proposed scheme uses a non-conforming BDM approach with suitable DG terms for the fluid part, combined with an $H^1$-conforming choice for the magnetic fluxes. The method introduces also a specific CIP-type stabilization associated to the coupling terms. Finally, the theoretical result are further validated by numerical experiments

A Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Ideal Two-Fluid Plasma Equations

A discontinuous Galerkin method for the ideal 5 moment two-fluid plasma system is presented. The method uses a second or third order discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization and a third order TVD Runge-Kutta time stepping scheme. The method is benchmarked against an analytic solution of a dispersive electron acoustic square pulse as well as the two-fluid electromagnetic shock and existing numerical solutions to the GEM challenge magnetic reconnection problem. The algorithm can be generalized to arbitrary geometries and three dimensions. An approach to maintaining small gauge errors based on error propagation is suggested.Comment: 40 pages, 18 figures

Numerical Analysis of Laminar‐Turbulent Bifurcation Scenarios in Kelvin‐Helmholtz and Rayleigh‐Taylor Instabilities for Compressible Flow

In the chapter, we are focused on laminar-turbulent transition in compressible flows triggered by Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) and Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instabilities. Compressible flow equations in conservation form are considered. We bring forth the characteristic feature of supersonic flow from the dynamical system point of view. Namely, we show analytically and confirm numerically that the phase space is separated into independent subspaces by the systems of stationary shock waves. Floquet theory analysis is applied to the linearized problem using matrix-free implicitly restarted Arnoldi method. All numerical methods are designed for CPU and multiGPU architecture using MPI across GPUs. Some benchmark data and features of development are presented. We show that KH for symmetric 2D perturbations undergoes cycle bifurcation scenarios with many chaotic cycle threads, each thread being a Feigenbaum-Sharkovskiy-Magnitskii (FShM) cascade. With the break of the symmetry, a 3D instability develops rapidly, and the bifurcations includes Landau-Hopf scenario with computationally stable 4D torus. For each torus, there exist threads of cycles that can develop chaotic regimes, so the flow is more complicated and difficult to study. Thus, we present laminar-turbulent development of compressible RT and KH instabilities as the bifurcations scenarios

A Mixed Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Incompressible Magnetohydrodynamics

We introduce and analyze a discontinuous Galerkin method for the numerical discretization of a stationary incompressible magnetohydrodynamics model problem. The fluid unknowns are discretized with inf-sup stable discontinuous P^3_{k}-P_{k-1} elements whereas the magnetic part of the equations is approximated by discontinuous P^3_{k}-P_{k+1} elements. We carry out a complete a-priori error analysis and prove that the energy norm error is convergent of order O(h^k) in the mesh size h. We also show that the method is able to correctly capture and resolve the strongest magnetic singularities in non-convex polyhedral domains. These results are verified in a series of numerical experiments

Monolithic multigrid methods for high-order discretizations of time-dependent PDEs

A currently growing interest is seen in developing solvers that couple high-fidelity and higher-order spatial discretization schemes with higher-order time stepping methods for various time-dependent fluid plasma models. These problems are famously known to be stiff, thus only implicit time-stepping schemes with certain stability properties can be used. Of the most powerful choices are the implicit Runge-Kutta methods (IRK). However, they are multi-stage, often producing a very large and nonsymmetric system of equations that needs to be solved at each time step. There have been recent efforts on developing efficient and robust solvers for these systems. We have accomplished this by using a Newton-Krylov-multigrid approach that applies a multigrid preconditioner monolithically, preserving the system couplings, and uses Newton’s method for linearization wherever necessary. We show robustness of our solver on the single-fluid magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model, along with the (Navier-)Stokes and Maxwell’s equations. For all these, we couple IRK with higher-order (mixed) finiteelement (FEM) spatial discretizations. In the Navier-Stokes problem, we further explore achieving more higher-order approximations by using nonconforming mixed FEM spaces with added penalty terms for stability. While in the Maxwell problem, we focus on the rarely used E-B form, where both electric and magnetic fields are differentiated in time, and overcome the difficulty of using FEM on curved domains by using an elasticity solve on each level in the non-nested hierarchy of meshes in the multigrid method

Fast and scalable solvers for high-order hybridized discontinuous Galerkin methods with applications to fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics

The hybridized discontinuous Galerkin methods (HDG) introduced a decade ago is a promising candidate for high-order spatial discretization combined with implicit/implicit-explicit time stepping. Roughly speaking, HDG methods combines the advantages of both discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods and hybridized methods. In particular, it enjoys the benefits of equal order spaces, upwinding and ability to handle large gradients of DG methods as well as the smaller globally coupled linear system, adaptivity, and multinumeric capabilities of hybridized methods. However, the main bottleneck in HDG methods, limiting its use to small to moderate sized problems, is the lack of scalable linear solvers. In this thesis we develop fast and scalable solvers for HDG methods consisting of domain decomposition, multigrid and multilevel solvers/preconditioners with an ultimate focus on simulating large scale problems in fluid dynamics and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). First, we propose a domain decomposition based solver namely iterative HDG for partial differential equations (PDEs). It is a fixed point iterative scheme, with each iteration consisting only of element-by-element and face-by-face embarrassingly parallel solves. Using energy analysis we prove the convergence of the schemes for scalar and system of hyperbolic PDEs and verify the results numerically. We then propose a novel geometric multigrid approach for HDG methods based on fine scale Dirichlet-to-Neumann maps. The algorithm combines the robustness of algebraic multigrid methods due to operator dependent intergrid transfer operators and at the same time has fixed coarse grid construction costs due to its geometric nature. For diffusion dominated PDEs such as the Poisson and the Stokes equations the algorithm gives almost perfect hp--scalability. Next, we propose a multilevel algorithm by combining the concepts of nested dissection, a fill-in reducing ordering strategy, variational structure and high-order properties of HDG, and domain decomposition. Thanks to its root in direct solver strategy the performance of the solver is almost independent of the nature of the PDEs and mostly depends on the smoothness of the solution. We demonstrate this numerically with several prototypical PDEs. Finally, we propose a block preconditioning strategy for HDG applied to incompressible visco-resistive MHD. We use a least squares commutator approximation for the inverse of the Schur complement and algebraic multigrid or the multilevel preconditioner for the approximate inverse of the nodal block. With several 2D and 3D transient examples we demonstrate the robustness and parallel scalability of the block preconditionerAerospace Engineerin

Computational Engineering

The focus of this Computational Engineering Workshop was on the mathematical foundation of state-of-the-art and emerging finite element methods in engineering analysis. The 52 participants included mathematicians and engineers with shared interest on discontinuous Galerkin or Petrov-Galerkin methods and other generalized nonconforming or mixed finite element methods