On Approximating Discontinuous Solutions of PDEs by Adaptive Finite Elements

For singularly perturbed problems with a small diffusion, when the transient layer is very sharp and the computational mesh is relatively coarse, the solution can be viewed as discontinuous. For both linear and nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equations, the solution can be discontinuous. When finite element methods with piecewise polynomials are used to approximate these discontinuous solutions, numerical solutions often overshoot near a discontinuity. Can this be resolved by adaptive mesh refinements? In this paper, for a simple discontinuous function, we explicitly compute its continuous and discontinuous piecewise constant or linear projections on discontinuity matched or non-matched meshes. For the simple discontinuity-aligned mesh case, piecewise discontinuous approximations are always good. For the general non-matched case, we explain that the piecewise discontinuous constant approximation combined with adaptive mesh refinements is the best choice to achieve accuracy without overshooting. For discontinuous piecewise linear approximations, non-trivial overshootings will be observed unless the mesh is matched with discontinuity. For continuous piecewise linear approximations, the computation is based on a "far away assumption", and non-trivial overshootings will always be observed under regular meshes. We calculate the explicit overshooting values for several typical cases. Several numerical tests are preformed for a singularly-perturbed reaction-diffusion equation and linear hyperbolic equations to verify our findings in the paper.Comment: 23 page