Mixed Covolume Methods on Rectangular Grids for Elliptic Problems

We consider a covolume method for a system of first order PDEs resulting from the mixed formulation of the variable-coefficient-matrix Poisson equation with the Neumann boundary condition. The system may be used to represent the Darcy law and the mass conservation law in anisotropic porous media flow. The velocity and pressure are approximated by the lowest order Raviart-Thomas space on rectangles. The method was introduced by Russell [Rigorous Block- centered Discretizations on Irregular Grids: Improved Simulation of Complex Reservoir Systems, Reservoir Simulation Research Corporation, Denver, CO, 1995] as a control-volume mixed method and has been extensively tested by Jones [A Mixed Finite Volume Elementary Method for Accurate Computation of Fluid Velocities in Porous Media, University of Colorado at Denver, 1995] and Cai et al. [Computational Geosciences, 1 (1997), pp. 289-345]. We reformulate it as a covolume method and prove its first order optimal rate of convergence for the approximate velocities as well as for the approximate pressures

Flux Recovery from Primal Hybrid Finite Element Methods

A flux recovery technique is introduced and analyzed for the computed solution of the primal hybrid finite element method for second-order elliptic problems. The recovery is carried out over a single element at a time while ensuring the continuity of the flux across the interelement edges and the validity of the discrete conservation law at the element level. Our construction is general enough to cover all degreesof polynomialsand gridsof triangular or quadrilateral type. We illustrate the principle using the Raviart–Thomas spaces, but other well-known related function spaces such as the Brezzi–Douglas–Marini (BDM) or Brezzi–Douglas–Fortin–Marini (BDFM) space can be used as well. An extension of the technique to the nonlinear case is given. Numerical results are presented to confirm the theoretical results

A General Framework for Constructing and Analyzing Mixed Finite Volume Methods on Quadrilateral Grids: The Overlapping Covolume Case

We present a general framework for constructing and analyzing finite volume methods applied to the mixed formulation of second-order elliptic problems on quadrilateral grids. The control volumes, or covolumes, in the grids overlap. An overlapping finite volume method of this type was first introduced by Russell in [T. F. Russell, Tech. report 3, Reservoir Simulation Research Corp., Tulsa, OK, 1995] and was tested for a variety of problems on rectangular and quadrilateral grids in [Z. Cai et al., Comput Geosci., 1 (1997), pp. 289–315]. Later in [S. H. Chou and D. Y. Kwak, SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 37 (2000), pp. 758–771], Chou and Kwak reformulated it as their mixed covolume method and proved optimal order error estimates using the covolume methodology from [S. H. Chou, Math. Comp., 66 (1997), pp. 85–104] and [S. H. Chou and D. Y. Kwak, SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 35 (1998), pp. 494–507]. However, their treatment was restricted to the case of diagonal coefficient tensor and rectangular grids since a different approach was needed for the quadrilateral (distorted rectangular) case. In this paper we give a new framework, which can handle not only the rectangular anisotropic case but also the anisotropic and irregular grid cases in which the locally supported test functions are images of the natural unit coordinate vectors under the Piola transformation. Our theory sheds light on how to create new test functions using quadratures and now covers Russell’s quadrilateral case

Mixed Covolume Methods for Elliptic Problems on Triangular Grids

We consider a covolume or finite volume method for a system of first-order PDEs resulting from the mixed formulation of the variable coefficient-matrix Poisson equation with the Neumann boundary condition. The system may represent either the Darcy law and the mass conservation law in anisotropic porous media flow, or Fourier law and energy conservation. The velocity and pressure are approximated by the lowest order Raviart-Thomas space on triangles. We prove its first-order optimal rate of convergence for the approximate velocities in the L2-and H(div; Q)-norms as well as for the approximate pressures in the L2-norm. Numerical experiments are included