Convergence of a nonconforming multiscale finite element method

The multiscale finite element method (MsFEM) [T. Y. Hou, X. H. Wu, and Z. Cai, Math. Comp., 1998, to appear; T. Y. Hou and X. H. Wu, J. Comput. Phys., 134 (1997), pp. 169-189] has been introduced to capture the large scale solutions of elliptic equations with highly oscillatory coefficients. This is accomplished by constructing the multiscale base functions from the local solutions of the elliptic operator. Our previous study reveals that the leading order error in this approach is caused by the "resonant sampling," which leads to large error when the mesh size is close to the small scale of the continuous problem. Similar difficulty also arises in numerical upscaling methods. An oversampling technique has been introduced to alleviate this difficulty [T. Y. Hou and X. H. Wu, J. Comput. Phys., 134 (1997), pp. 169-189]. A consequence of the oversampling method is that the resulting finite element method is no longer conforming. Here we give a detailed analysis of the nonconforming error. Our analysis also reveals a new cell resonance error which is caused by the mismatch between the mesh size and the wavelength of the small scale. We show that the cell resonance error is of lower order. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that the cell resonance error is generically small and is difficult to observe in practice

A Note on Data-Driven Contaminant Simulation

Abstract. In this paper we introduce a numerical procedure for per-forming dynamic data driven simulations (DDDAS). The main ingredi-ent of our simulation is the multiscale interpolation technique that maps the sensor data into the solution space. We test our method on various synthetic examples. In particular we show that frequent updating of the sensor data in the simulations can significantly improve the prediction results and thus important for applications. The frequency of sensor data updating in the simulations is related to streaming capabilities and ad-dressed within DDDAS framework. A further extension of our approach using local inversion is also discussed.

The Multiscale Finite Element Method (MsFEM) and Its Applications

Multiscale problems occur in many scientific and engineering disciplines, in petroleum engineering, material science, etc. These problems are characterized by the great deal of spatial and time scales which make it difficult to analyze theoretically or solve numerically. On the other hand, the large scale features of the solutions are often of main interest. Thus, it is desirable to have a numerical method that can capture the effect of small scales on large scales without resolving the small scale details. In the first part of this work we analyze the multiscale finite element method (MsFEM) introduced in [28] for elliptic problems with oscillatory coefficients. The idea behind MsFEM is to capture the small scale information through the base functions constructed in elements that are larger than the small scale of the problem. This is achieved by solving for the finite element base functions from the leading order of homogeneous elliptic equation. We analyze MsFEM for different situations both analytically and numerically. We also investigate the origin of the resonance errors associated with the method and discuss the ways to improve them. In the second part we discuss flow based upscaling of absolute permeability which is an important step in the practical simulations of flow through heterogeneous formations. The central idea is to compute the upscaled, grid-block permeability from fine scale solutions of the flow equation. It is well known that the grid block permeability may be strongly influenced by the boundary conditions imposed on the flow equations and the size of grid blocks. We analyze the effects of the boundary conditions and grid block sizes on the computed grid block absolute permeabilities. Moreover, we employ the ideas developed in the analysis of MsFEM to improve the computed values of absolute permeability. The last part of the work is the application of MsFEM as well as upscaling of absolute permeability on upscaling of two-phase flow. In this part we consider coarse models using MsFEM. We demonstrate the efficiency of these models for practical problems. Moreover, we show that these models improve the existing approaches.</p

Multiscale finite element for problems with highly oscillatory coefficients

In this paper, we study a multiscale finite element method for solving a class of elliptic problems with finite number of well separated scales. The method is designed to efficiently capture the large scale behavior of the solution without resolving all small scale features. This is accomplished by constructing the multiscale finite element base functions that are adaptive to the local property of the differential operator. The construction of the base functions is fully decoupled from element to element; thus the method is perfectly parallel and is naturally adapted to massively parallel computers. We present the convergence analysis of the method along with the results of our numerical experiments. Some generalizations of the multiscale finite element method are also discussed

Virtual Telemetry for Dynamic Data-Driven Application Simulations

1 Introduction Consider an extreme example of a disaster scenario in which a major waste spilloccurs in a river flowing through the center of a major city. In short time, the waste will be on kilometers of the city&apos;s shoreline. Sensors can now be dropped into an open water body to measure where thecontamination is, where the contaminant is going to go, and to monitor th