Analysis of a BDF–DGFE scheme for nonlinear convection–diffusion problems

We deal with the numerical solution of a scalar nonstationary nonlinear convection–diffusion equation. We employ a combination of the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for the space semi-discretization and the k-step backward difference formula for the time discretization. The diffusive and stabilization terms are treated implicitly whereas the nonlinear convective term is treated by a higher order explicit extrapolation method, which leads to the necessity to solve only a linear algebraic problem at each time step. We analyse this scheme and derive a priori asymptotic error estimates in the discrete L ^∞(L ²)-norm and the L ²(H ¹)-seminorm with respect to the mesh size h and time step τ for k = 2,3. Numerical examples verifying the theoretical results are presented. This work is a part of the research project MSM 0021620839 financed by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic and was partly supported by the Grant No. 316/2006/B-MAT/MFF of the Grant Agency of the Charles University Prague. The research of M. Vlasák was supported by the project LC06052 of the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic (Jindřich Nečas Center for Mathematical Modelling).     

Spectral collocation methods for nonlinear weakly singular Volterra integro‐differential equations

In this paper, a spectral collocation approximation is proposed for neutral and nonlinear weakly singular Volterra integro‐differential equations (VIDEs) with non‐smooth solutions. We use some suitable variable transformations to change the original equation into a new equation, so that the solution of the resulting equation possesses better regularity, and the the Jacobi orthogonal polynomial theory can be applied conveniently. Under reasonable assumptions on the nonlinearity, we carry out a rigorous error analysis in L^∞ norm and weighted L² norm. To perform the numerical simulations, some test examples (linear and nonlinear) are considered with nonsmooth solutions, and numerical results are presented. Further more, the comparative study of the proposed methods with some existing numerical methods is provided.     

Superconvergence of the direct discontinuous Galerkin method for a time‐fractional initial‐boundary value problem

A time‐fractional reaction–diffusion initial‐boundary value problem with periodic boundary condition is considered on Q ? Ω × [0, T] , where Ω is the interval [0, l] . Typical solutions of such problem have a weak singularity at the initial time t = 0. The numerical method of the paper uses a direct discontinuous Galerkin (DDG) finite element method in space on a uniform mesh, with piecewise polynomials of degree k ≥ 2 . In the temporal direction we use the L1 approximation of the Caputo derivative on a suitably graded mesh. We prove that at each time level of the mesh, our L1‐DDG solution is superconvergent of order k + 2 in L²(Ω) to a particular projection of the exact solution. Moreover, the L1‐DDG solution achieves superconvergence of order (k + 2) in a discrete L²(Q) norm computed at the Lobatto points, and order (k + 1) superconvergence in a discrete H¹(Q) seminorm at the Gauss points; numerical results show that these estimates are sharp.     

Bivariate spline method for numerical solution of time evolution Navier‐Stokes equations over polygons in stream function formulation

We use a bivariate spline method to solve the time evolution Navier‐Stokes equations numerically. The bivariate splines we use in this article are in the spline space of smoothness r and degree 3r over triangulated quadrangulations. The stream function formulation for the Navier‐Stokes equations is employed. Galerkin's method is applied to discretize the space variables of the nonlinear fourth‐order equation, Crank‐Nicholson's method is applied to discretize the time variable, and Newton's iterative method is then used to solve the resulting nonlinear system. We show the existence and uniqueness of the weak solution in L₂(0, T; H²(Ω)) ∩ L_∞(0, T; H¹(Ω)) of the 2D nonlinear fourth‐order problem and give an estimate of how fast the numerical solution converges to the weak solution. The C¹ cubic splines are implemented in MATLAB for solving the Navier‐Stokes equations numerically. Our numerical experiments show that the method is effective and efficient. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 19: 776–827, 2003.     

Convergence analysis for second‐order accurate schemes for the periodic nonlocal Allen‐Cahn and Cahn‐Hilliard equations

In this paper, we provide a detailed convergence analysis for fully discrete second‐order (in both time and space) numerical schemes for nonlocal Allen‐Cahn and nonlocal Cahn‐Hilliard equations. The unconditional unique solvability and energy stability ensures ? ⁴ stability. The convergence analysis for the nonlocal Allen‐Cahn equation follows the standard procedure of consistency and stability estimate for the numerical error function. For the nonlocal Cahn‐Hilliard equation, because of the complicated form of the nonlinear term, a careful expansion of its discrete gradient is undertaken, and an H ^?1 inner‐product estimate of this nonlinear numerical error is derived to establish convergence. In addition, an a priori bound of the numerical solution at the discrete level is needed in the error estimate. Such a bound can be obtained by performing a higher order consistency analysis by using asymptotic expansions for the numerical solution. Following the technique originally proposed by Strang (eg, 1964), instead of the standard comparison between the exact and numerical solutions, an error estimate between the numerical solution and the constructed approximate solution yields an O (s ³+h ⁴) convergence in norm, in which s and h denote the time step and spatial mesh sizes, respectively. This in turn leads to the necessary bound under a standard constraint s ≤C h . Here, we also prove convergence of the scheme in the maximum norm under the same constraint.     

Error Estimates for Barycentric Finite Volumes Combined with Nonconforming Finite Elements Applied to Nonlinear Convection-Diffusion Problems

The subject of the paper is the derivation of error estimates for the combined finite volume-finite element method used for the numerical solution of nonstationary nonlinear convection-diffusion problems. Here we analyze the combination of barycentric finite volumes associated with sides of triangulation with the piecewise linear nonconforming Crouzeix-Raviart finite elements. Under some assumptions on the regularity of the exact solution, the L ²(L ²) and L ²(H ¹) error estimates are established. At the end of the paper, some computational results are presented demonstrating the application of the method to the solution of viscous gas flow.     

Local well‐posedness for a system of quadratic nonlinear Schrödinger equations in one or two dimensions

In this article, the local well‐posedness of Cauchy's problem is explored for a system of quadratic nonlinear Schrödinger equations in the space L^p( R ⁿ). In a special case of mass resonant 2 × 2 system, it is well known that this problem is well posed in H^s(s≥0) and ill posed in H^s(s < 0) in two‐space dimensions. By translation on a linear semigroup, we show that the general system becomes locally well posed in L^p( R ²) for 1 < p < 2, for which p can arbitrarily be close to the scaling limit p_c=1. In one‐dimensional case, we show that the problem is locally well posed in L¹( R ); moreover, it has a measure valued solution if the initial data are a Dirac function. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Long time error analysis of the fourth‐order compact finite difference methods for the nonlinear Klein–Gordon equation with weak nonlinearity

We present the fourth‐order compact finite difference (4cFD) discretizations for the long time dynamics of the nonlinear Klein–Gordon equation (NKGE), while the nonlinearity strength is characterized by ?^p with a constant p ∈ ?⁺ and a dimensionless parameter ? ∈ (0, 1] . Based on analytical results of the life‐span of the solution, rigorous error bounds of the 4cFD methods are carried out up to the time at O(?^?p) . We pay particular attention to how error bounds depend explicitly on the mesh size h and time step τ as well as the small parameter ? ∈ (0, 1] , which indicate that, in order to obtain ‘correct’ numerical solutions up to the time at O(?^?p) , the ? ‐scalability (or meshing strategy requirement) of the 4cFD methods should be taken as: h = O(?^p/4) and τ = O(?^p/2) . It has better spatial resolution capacity than the classical second order central difference methods. By a rescaling in time, it is equivalent to an oscillatory NKGE whose solution propagates waves with wavelength at O(1) in space and O(?^p) in time. It is straightforward to get the error bounds of the oscillatory NKGE in the fixed time. Finally, numerical results are provided to confirm our theoretical analysis.     

Interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin methods with implicit time‐integration techniques for nonlinear parabolic equations

We prove existence and numerical stability of numerical solutions of three fully discrete interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin methods for solving nonlinear parabolic equations. Under some appropriate regularity conditions, we give the l²(H¹) and l^∞(L²) error estimates of the fully discrete symmetric interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin–scheme with the implicit θ ‐schemes in time, which include backward Euler and Crank–Nicolson finite difference approximations. Our estimates are optimal with respect to the mesh size h. The theoretical results are confirmed by some numerical experiments. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2013     

One‐level and two‐level finite element methods for the Boussinesq problem

Previous works on the convergence of numerical methods for the Boussinesq problem were conducted, while the optimal L²‐norm error estimates for the velocity and temperature are still lacked. In this paper, the backward Euler scheme is used to discrete the time terms, standard Galerkin finite element method is adopted to approximate the variables. The MINI element is used to approximate the velocity and pressure, the temperature field is simulated by the linear polynomial. Under some restriction on the time step, we firstly present the optimal L² error estimates of approximate solutions. Secondly, two‐level method based on Stokes iteration for the Boussinesq problem is developed and the corresponding convergence results are presented. By this method, the original problem is decoupled into two small linear subproblems. Compared with the standard Galerkin method, the two‐level method not only keeps good accuracy but also saves a lot of computational cost. Finally, some numerical examples are provided to support the established theoretical analysis.     

Graph diameter in long‐range percolation

We study the asymptotic growth of the diameter of a graph obtained by adding sparse “long” edges to a square box in ${\mathbb Z}^dWe study the asymptotic growth of the diameter of a graph obtained by adding sparse “long” edges to a square box in ${\mathbb Z}^d$. We focus on the cases when an edge between x and y is added with probability decaying with the Euclidean distance as |x ? y|^?s+o(1) when |x ? y| → ∞. For s ∈ (d, 2d) we show that the graph diameter for the graph reduced to a box of side L scales like (log L)^Δ+o(1) where Δ^?1 := log₂(2d/s). In particular, the diameter grows about as fast as the typical graph distance between two vertices at distance L. We also show that a ball of radius r in the intrinsic metric on the (infinite) graph will roughly coincide with a ball of radius exp{r^1/Δ+o(1)} in the Euclidean metric. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 39, 210‐227, 2011     

A defect correction method for the time‐dependent Navier‐Stokes equations

A method for solving the time dependent Navier‐Stokes equations, aiming at higher Reynolds' number, is presented. The direct numerical simulation of flows with high Reynolds' number is computationally expensive. The method presented is unconditionally stable, computationally cheap, and gives an accurate approximation to the quantities sought. In the defect step, the artificial viscosity parameter is added to the inverse Reynolds number as a stability factor, and the system is antidiffused in the correction step. Stability of the method is proven, and the error estimations for velocity and pressure are derived for the one‐ and two‐step defect‐correction methods. The spacial error is O(h) for the one‐step defect‐correction method, and O(h²) for the two‐step method, where h is the diameter of the mesh. The method is compared to an alternative approach, and both methods are applied to a singularly perturbed convection–diffusion problem. The numerical results are given, which demonstrate the advantage (stability, no oscillations) of the method presented. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2009     

Operator time‐splitting techniques combined with quintic B‐spline collocation method for the generalized Rosenau–KdV equation

In this article, the generalized Rosenau–KdV equation is split into two subequations such that one is linear and the other is nonlinear. The resulting subequations with the prescribed initial and boundary conditions are numerically solved by the first order Lie–Trotter and the second‐order Strang time‐splitting techniques combined with the quintic B‐spline collocation by the help of the fourth order Runge–Kutta (RK‐4) method. To show the accuracy and reliability of the proposed techniques, two test problems having exact solutions are considered. The computed error norms L₂ and L_∞ with the conservative properties of the discrete mass Q(t) and energy E(t) are compared with those available in the literature. The convergence orders of both techniques have also been calculated. Moreover, the stability analyses of the numerical schemes are investigated.     

A Crank‐Nicolson Petrov‐Galerkin method with quadrature for semi‐linear parabolic problems

We propose and analyze an application of a fully discrete C² spline quadrature Petrov‐Galerkin method for spatial discretization of semi‐linear parabolic initial‐boundary value problems on rectangular domains. We prove second order in time and optimal order H¹ norm convergence in space for the extrapolated Crank‐Nicolson quadrature Petrov‐Galerkin scheme. We demonstrate numerically both L² and H¹ norm optimal order convergence of the scheme even if the nonlinear source term is not smooth. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2005.     

Fully discrete interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin methods for nonlinear parabolic equations

In this article, we investigate interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin (IPDG) methods for solving a class of two‐dimensional nonlinear parabolic equations. For semi‐discrete IPDG schemes on a quasi‐uniform family of meshes, we obtain a priori bounds on solutions measured in the L² norm and in the broken Sobolev norm. The fully discrete IPDG schemes considered are based on the approximation by forward Euler difference in time and broken Sobolev space. Under a restriction related to the mesh size and time step, an hp ‐version of an a priori l^∞(L²) and l²(H¹) error estimate is derived and numerical experiments are presented.© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 28: 288–311, 2012     

A two‐grid characteristic finite volume element method for semilinear advection‐dominated diffusion equations

A two‐grid finite volume element method, combined with the modified method of characteristics, is presented and analyzed for semilinear time‐dependent advection‐dominated diffusion equations in two space dimensions. The solution of a nonlinear system on the fine‐grid space (with grid size h) is reduced to the solution of two small (one linear and one nonlinear) systems on the coarse‐grid space (with grid size H) and a linear system on the fine‐grid space. An optimal error estimate in H¹ ‐norm is obtained for the two‐grid method. It shows that the two‐grid method achieves asymptotically optimal approximation, as long as the mesh sizes satisfy h = O(H²). Numerical example is presented to validate the usefulness and efficiency of the method. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2013     

Combination of standard Galerkin and subspace methods for the time‐dependent Navier‐Stokes equations with nonsmooth initial data

We consider a combination of the standard Galerkin method and the subspace decomposition methods for the numerical solution of the two‐dimensional time‐dependent incompressible Navier‐Stokes equations with nonsmooth initial data. Because of the poor smoothness of the solution near t = 0, we use the standard Galerkin method for time interval [0, 1] and the subspace decomposition method time interval [1, ∞). The subspace decomposition method is based on the solution into the sum of a low frequency component integrated using a small time step Δt and a high frequency integrated using a larger time step pΔt with p > 1. From the H¹‐stability and L²‐error analysis, we show that the subspace decomposition method can yield a significant gain in computing time. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 2009     

Some remarks on essential self‐adjointness and ultracontractivity of a class of singular elliptic operators

We study the properties of essential self‐adjointness on C^∞_c (ℝ^N ) and semigroup ultracontractivity of a class of singular second order elliptic operators defined in L² (ℝ^N , σ^{–a –N} (x) dx) with Dirichlet boundary conditions, where a, b ∈ ℝ and σ: ℝ^N → (0, ∞) is a C^∞‐function satisfying c^‐1(1 + |x |) ≤ σ (x) ≤ c (1 + |x |) (x ∈ ℝN). We also obtain sharp short time upper and lower diagonal bounds on the heat kernel of e –^Ht. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Analysis of a combined mixed finite element and discontinuous Galerkin method for incompressible two‐phase flow in porous media

We analyze a combined method consisting of the mixed finite element method for pressure equation and the discontinuous Galerkin method for saturation equation for the coupled system of incompressible two‐phase flow in porous media. The existence and uniqueness of numerical solutions are established under proper conditions by using a constructive approach. Optimal error estimates in L²(H¹) for saturation and in L ^∞ (H(div)) for velocity are derived. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Superconvergence analysis of a linearized three‐step backward differential formula finite element method for nonlinear Sobolev equation

A linearized three‐step backward differential formula (BDF) Galerkin finite element method (FEM) is developed for nonlinear Sobolev equation with bilinear element. Temporal error and spatial error are discussed through introducing a time‐discrete system. Solutions of the time‐discrete system are bounded in H²‐norm by the temporal error. Superconvergence results of order O(h² + τ³) in H¹‐norm for the original variable are deduced based on the spatial error. Some new tricks are utilized to get higher order of the temporal error and the spatial error. At last, two numerical examples are provided to support the theoretical analysis. Here, h is the subdivision parameter, and τ is the time step.