Interior Penalty Continuous and Discontinuous Finite Element Approximations of Hyperbolic Equations

In this paper we present in a unified setting the continuous and discontinuous Galerkin methods for the numerical approximation of the scalar hyperbolic equation. Both methods are stabilized by the interior penalty method, more precisely by the jump of the gradient across element faces in the continuous case whereas in the discontinuous case the stabilization of the jump of the solution and optionally of its gradient is required to achieve optimal convergence. We prove that the solution in the case of the continuous Galerkin approach can be considered as a limit of the discontinuous one when the stabilization parameter associated with the penalization of the solution jump tends to infinity. As a consequence, the limit of the numerical flux of the discontinuous method yields a numerical flux for the continuous method as well. Numerical results will highlight the theoretical results that are proven in this pape

Explicit local time-stepping methods for time-dependent wave propagation

Semi-discrete Galerkin formulations of transient wave equations, either with conforming or discontinuous Galerkin finite element discretizations, typically lead to large systems of ordinary differential equations. When explicit time integration is used, the time-step is constrained by the smallest elements in the mesh for numerical stability, possibly a high price to pay. To overcome that overly restrictive stability constraint on the time-step, yet without resorting to implicit methods, explicit local time-stepping schemes (LTS) are presented here for transient wave equations either with or without damping. In the undamped case, leap-frog based LTS methods lead to high-order explicit LTS schemes, which conserve the energy. In the damped case, when energy is no longer conserved, Adams-Bashforth based LTS methods also lead to explicit LTS schemes of arbitrarily high accuracy. When combined with a finite element discretization in space with an essentially diagonal mass matrix, the resulting time-marching schemes are fully explicit and thus inherently parallel. Numerical experiments with continuous and discontinuous Galerkin finite element discretizations validate the theory and illustrate the usefulness of these local time-stepping methods.Comment: overview paper, typos added, references updated. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1109.448

An optimal order interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin discretization of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations

In this article we propose a new symmetric version of the interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for the numerical approximation of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. Here, particular emphasis is devoted to the construction of an optimal numerical method for the evaluation of certain target functionals of practical interest, such as the lift and drag coefficients of a body immersed in a viscous fluid. With this in mind, the key ingredients in the construction of the method include: (i) An adjoint consistent imposition of the boundary conditions; (ii) An adjoint consistent reformulation of the underlying target functional of practical interest; (iii) Design of appropriate interior--penalty stabilization terms. Numerical experiments presented within this article clearly indicate the optimality of the proposed method when the error is measured in terms of both the L2-norm, as well as for certain target functionals. Computational comparisons with other discontinuous Galerkin schemes proposed in the literature, including the second scheme of Bassi and Rebay, the standard SIPG method outlined in [Hartmann,Houston-2006], and an NIPG variant of the new scheme will be undertaken

The role of numerical boundary procedures in the stability of perfectly matched layers

In this paper we address the temporal energy growth associated with numerical approximations of the perfectly matched layer (PML) for Maxwell's equations in first order form. In the literature, several studies have shown that a numerical method which is stable in the absence of the PML can become unstable when the PML is introduced. We demonstrate in this paper that this instability can be directly related to numerical treatment of boundary conditions in the PML. First, at the continuous level, we establish the stability of the constant coefficient initial boundary value problem for the PML. To enable the construction of stable numerical boundary procedures, we derive energy estimates for the variable coefficient PML. Second, we develop a high order accurate and stable numerical approximation for the PML using summation--by--parts finite difference operators to approximate spatial derivatives and weak enforcement of boundary conditions using penalties. By constructing analogous discrete energy estimates we show discrete stability and convergence of the numerical method. Numerical experiments verify the theoretical result