We present a comparison between hybridized and non-hybridized discontinuous
Galerkin methods in the context of target-based hp-adaptation for compressible
flow problems. The aim is to provide a critical assessment of the computational
efficiency of hybridized DG methods. Hybridization of finite element
discretizations has the main advantage, that the resulting set of algebraic
equations has globally coupled degrees of freedom only on the skeleton of the
computational mesh. Consequently, solving for these degrees of freedom involves
the solution of a potentially much smaller system. This not only reduces
storage requirements, but also allows for a faster solution with iterative
solvers. Using a discrete-adjoint approach, sensitivities with respect to
output functionals are computed to drive the adaptation. From the error
distribution given by the adjoint-based error estimator, h- or p-refinement is
chosen based on the smoothness of the solution which can be quantified by
properly-chosen smoothness indicators. Numerical results are shown for
subsonic, transonic, and supersonic flow around the NACA0012 airfoil.
hp-adaptation proves to be superior to pure h-adaptation if discontinuous or
singular flow features are involved. In all cases, a higher polynomial degree
turns out to be beneficial. We show that for polynomial degree of approximation
p=2 and higher, and for a broad range of test cases, HDG performs better than
DG in terms of runtime and memory requirements