A sparse-grid isogeometric solver

Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) typically adopts tensor-product splines and NURBS as a basis for the approximation of the solution of PDEs. In this work, we investigate to which extent IGA solvers can benefit from the so-called sparse-grids construction in its combination technique form, which was first introduced in the early 90s in the context of the approximation of high-dimensional PDEs. The tests that we report show that, in accordance to the literature, a sparse-grid construction can indeed be useful if the solution of the PDE at hand is sufficiently smooth. Sparse grids can also be useful in the case of non-smooth solutions when some a-priori knowledge on the location of the singularities of the solution can be exploited to devise suitable non-equispaced meshes. Finally, we remark that sparse grids can be seen as a simple way to parallelize pre-existing serial IGA solvers in a straightforward fashion, which can be beneficial in many practical situations.Comment: updated version after revie

Sparse grid quadrature on products of spheres

We examine sparse grid quadrature on weighted tensor products (WTP) of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces on products of the unit sphere, in the case of worst case quadrature error for rules with arbitrary quadrature weights. We describe a dimension adaptive quadrature algorithm based on an algorithm of Hegland (2003), and also formulate a version of Wasilkowski and Wozniakowski's WTP algorithm (1999), here called the WW algorithm. We prove that the dimension adaptive algorithm is optimal in the sense of Dantzig (1957) and therefore no greater in cost than the WW algorithm. Both algorithms therefore have the optimal asymptotic rate of convergence given by Theorem 3 of Wasilkowski and Wozniakowski (1999). A numerical example shows that, even though the asymptotic convergence rate is optimal, if the dimension weights decay slowly enough, and the dimensionality of the problem is large enough, the initial convergence of the dimension adaptive algorithm can be slow.Comment: 34 pages, 6 figures. Accepted 7 January 2015 for publication in Numerical Algorithms. Revised at page proof stage to (1) update email address; (2) correct the accent on "Wozniakowski" on p. 7; (3) update reference 2; (4) correct references 3, 18 and 2