Stability of a combined finite element ‐ finite volume discretization of convection‐diffusion equations

We consider a time‐dependent and a stationary convection‐diffusion equation. These equations are approximated by a combined finite element – finite volume method: the diffusion term is discretized by Crouzeix‐Raviart piecewise linear finite elements on a triangular grid, and the convection term by upwind barycentric finite volumes. In the nonstationary case, we use an implicit Euler approach for time discretization. This scheme is shown to be L²‐stable uniformly with respect to the diffusion coefficient. In addition, it turns out that stability is unconditional in the time‐dependent case. These results hold if the underlying grid satisfies a condition that is fulfilled, for example, by some structured meshes. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 28: 402–424, 2012     

Error estimates of CFVE method for fully nonlinear convection‐dominated diffusion problems

Finite volume method and characteristics finite element method are two important methods for solving the partial differential equations. These two methods are combined in this paper to establish a fully discrete characteristics finite volume method for fully nonlinear convection‐dominated diffusion problems. Through detailed theoretical analysis, optimal order H¹ norm error estimates are obtained for this fully discrete scheme. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Two‐Grid method for nonlinear parabolic equations by expanded mixed finite element methods

In this article, we develop a two‐grid algorithm for nonlinear reaction diffusion equation (with nonlinear compressibility coefficient) discretized by expanded mixed finite element method. The key point is to use two‐grid scheme to linearize the nonlinear term in the equations. The main procedure of the algorithm is solving a small‐scaled nonlinear equations on the coarse grid and dealing with a linearized system on the fine space using the Newton iteration with the coarse grid solution. Error estimation to the expanded mixed finite element solution is analyzed in detail. We also show that two‐grid solution achieves the same accuracy as long as the mesh sizes satisfy H = O(h^1/2). Two numerical experiments are given to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2013     

Technical note: A fourth‐order finite difference scheme for a system of a 2D nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations

In this article we present a fourth‐order finite difference scheme, for a system of two‐dimensional, second‐order, nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations with mixed spatial derivative terms, using 13‐point stencils with a uniform mesh size h on a square region R subject to Dirichlet boundary conditions. The scheme of order h⁴ is derived using the local solution of the system on a single stencil. The resulting system of algebraic equations can be solved by iterative methods. The difference scheme can be easily modified to obtain formulae for grid points near the boundary. Computational results are given to demonstrate the performance of the scheme on some problems including Navier‐Stokes equations. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 17: 43–53, 2001     

Stability and convergence of two‐grid Crank‐Nicolson extrapolation scheme for the time‐dependent natural convection equations

In this paper, we consider the Crank‐Nicolson extrapolation scheme for the 2D/3D unsteady natural convection problem. Our numerical scheme includes the implicit Crank‐Nicolson scheme for linear terms and the recursive linear method for nonlinear terms. Standard Galerkin finite element method is used to approximate the spatial discretization. Stability and optimal error estimates are provided for the numerical solutions. Furthermore, a fully discrete two‐grid Crank‐Nicolson extrapolation scheme is developed, the corresponding stability and convergence results are derived for the approximate solutions. Comparison from aspects of the theoretical results and computational efficiency, the two‐grid Crank‐Nicolson extrapolation scheme has the same order as the one grid method for velocity and temperature in H¹‐norm and for pressure in L²‐norm. However, the two‐grid scheme involves much less work than one grid method. Finally, some numerical examples are provided to verify the established theoretical results and illustrate the performances of the developed numerical schemes.     

Alternating direction finite volume element methods for 2D parabolic partial differential equations

On the basis of rectangular partition and bilinear interpolation, this article presents alternating direction finite volume element methods for two dimensional parabolic partial differential equations and gives three computational schemes, one is analogous to Douglas finite difference scheme with second order splitting error, the second has third order splitting error, and the third is an extended locally one dimensional scheme. Optimal L² norm or H¹ semi‐norm error estimates are obtained for these schemes. Finally, two numerical examples illustrate the effectiveness of the schemes. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2007     

Numerical solution of first‐order hyperbolic partial differential‐difference equation with shift

In this article, we continue the numerical study of hyperbolic partial differential‐difference equation that was initiated in (Sharma and Singh, Appl Math Comput 9 ). In Sharma and Singh, the authors consider the problem with sufficiently small shift arguments. The term negative shift and positive shift are used for delay and advance arguments, respectively. Here, we propose a numerical scheme that works nicely irrespective of the size of shift arguments. In this article, we consider hyperbolic partial differential‐difference equation with negative or positive shift and present a numerical scheme based on the finite difference method for solving such type of initial and boundary value problems. The proposed numerical scheme is analyzed for stability and convergence in L^∞ norm. Finally, some test examples are given to validate convergence, the computational efficiency of the numerical scheme and the effect of shift arguments on the solution.© 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2010     

Unsteady heat and mass transfer over a vertical stretching sheet in a parallel free stream with variable wall temperature and concentration

Our aim in this article is to investigate numerically the unsteady two‐dimensional mixed convection flow along a vertical semi‐infinite stretching sheet in a parallel free stream with a power‐law wall temperature and concentration distributions of the form T _w (x) = T_∞ + Ax^2m?1 and C_w (x) = C_∞ + Bx^2m?1, where A, B and m are constants. The unsteadiness in the flow is caused by the time dependent stretching sheet as well as by the free stream velocity. The governing nonlinear partial differential equations in the velocity, temperature and concentration fields are written in nondimensional form using suitable transformations. The final set of resulting coupled nonlinear partial differential equations is solved using an implicit finite‐difference scheme in combination with a quasi‐linearization technique. The effects of various governing parameters on the velocity, temperature and concentration profiles as well as on the skin friction coefficient, local Nusseltnumber and local Sherwood number are presented and discussed in details. The computed numerically results are compared with previously reported work and are found to be in excellent agreement. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2011     

Two grid finite element discretization method for semi‐linear hyperbolic integro‐differential equations

In this paper, we will investigate a two grid finite element discretization method for the semi‐linear hyperbolic integro‐differential equations by piecewise continuous finite element method. In order to deal with the semi‐linearity of the model, we use the two grid technique and derive that once the coarse and fine mesh sizes H, h satisfy the relation h = H² for the two‐step two grid discretization method, the two grid method achieves the same convergence accuracy as the ordinary finite element method. Both theoretical analysis and numerical experiments are given to verify the results.     

On the stabilizing effect of convection in three‐dimensional incompressible flows

We investigate the stabilizing effect of convection in three‐dimensional incompressible Euler and Navier‐Stokes equations. The convection term is the main source of nonlinearity for these equations. It is often considered destabilizing although it conserves energy due to the incompressibility condition. In this paper, we show that the convection term together with the incompressibility condition actually has a surprising stabilizing effect. We demonstrate this by constructing a new three‐dimensional model that is derived for axisymmetric flows with swirl using a set of new variables. This model preserves almost all the properties of the full three‐dimensional Euler or Navier‐Stokes equations except for the convection term, which is neglected in our model. If we added the convection term back to our model, we would recover the full Navier‐Stokes equations. We will present numerical evidence that seems to support that the three‐dimensional model may develop a potential finite time singularity. We will also analyze the mechanism that leads to these singular events in the new three‐dimensional model and how the convection term in the full Euler and Navier‐Stokes equations destroys such a mechanism, thus preventing the singularity from forming in a finite time. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

High‐order numerical methods for one‐dimensional parabolic singularly perturbed problems with regular layers

In this work we construct and analyze some finite difference schemes used to solve a class of time‐dependent one‐dimensional convection‐diffusion problems, which present only regular layers in their solution. We use the implicit Euler or the Crank‐Nicolson method to discretize the time variable and a HODIE finite difference scheme, defined on a piecewise uniform Shishkin mesh, to discretize the spatial variable. In both cases we prove that the numerical method is uniformly convergent with respect to the diffusion parameter, having order near two in space and order one or 3/2, depending on the method used, in time. We show some numerical examples which illustrate the theoretical results, in the case of using the Euler implicit method, and give better numerical behaviour than that predicted theoretically, showing order two in time and order N^?2log²N in space, if the Crank‐Nicolson scheme is used to discretize the time variable. Finally, we construct a numerical algorithm by combining a third order A‐stable SDIRK with two stages and a third‐order HODIE difference scheme, showing its uniformly convergent behavior, reaching order three, up to a logarithmic factor. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2005     

Modification of upwind finite difference fractional step methods by the transient state of the semiconductor device

The mathematical model of the three‐dimensional semiconductor devices of heat conduction is described by a system of four quasi‐linear partial differential equations for initial boundary value problem. One equation of elliptic form is for the electric potential; two equations of convection‐dominated diffusion type are for the electron and hole concentration; and one heat conduction equation is for temperature. Upwind finite difference fractional step methods are put forward. Some techniques, such as calculus of variations, energy method multiplicative commutation rule of difference operators, decomposition of high order difference operators, and the theory of prior estimates and techniques are adopted. Optimal order estimates in L² norm are derived to determine the error in the approximate solution.© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 2008     

The stability and convergence of two linearized finite difference schemes for the nonlinear epitaxial growth model

The numerical simulation of the dynamics of the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth is considered in this article. The governing equation is a nonlinear evolutionary equation that is of linear fourth order derivative term and nonlinear second order derivative term in space. The main purpose of this work is to construct and analyze two linearized finite difference schemes for solving the MBE model. The linearized backward Euler difference scheme and the linearized Crank‐Nicolson difference scheme are derived. The unique solvability, unconditional stability and convergence are proved. The linearized Euler scheme is convergent with the convergence order of O(τ + h²) and linearized Crank‐Nicolson scheme is convergent with the convergence order of O(τ² + h²) in discrete L²‐norm, respectively. Numerical stability with respect to the initial conditions is also obtained for both schemes. Numerical experiments are carried out to demonstrate the theoretical analysis. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2011     

A parameter‐uniform scheme for the parabolic singularly perturbed problem with a delay in time

In this paper, a parameter‐uniform numerical scheme for the solution of singularly perturbed parabolic convection–diffusion problems with a delay in time defined on a rectangular domain is suggested. The presence of the small diffusion parameter ? leads to a parabolic right boundary layer. A collocation method consisting of cubic B ‐spline basis functions on an appropriate piecewise‐uniform mesh is used to discretize the system of ordinary differential equations obtained by using Rothe's method on an equidistant mesh in the temporal direction. The parameter‐uniform convergence of the method is shown by establishing the theoretical error bounds. The numerical results of the test problems validate the theoretical error bounds.     

A second‐order finite difference approximation for a mathematical model of erythropoiesis

We present a second‐order finite difference scheme for approximating solutions of a mathematical model of erythropoiesis, which consists of two nonlinear partial differential equations and one nonlinear ordinary differential equation. We show that the scheme achieves second‐order accuracy for smooth solutions. We compare this scheme to a previously developed first‐order method and show that the first order method requires significantly more computational time to provide solutions with similar accuracy. We also compare this numerical scheme with other well‐known second‐order methods and show that it has better capability in approximating discontinuous solutions. Finally, we present an application to recovery after blood loss. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2013     

Block‐centered upwind multistep difference method and convergence analysis for numerical simulation of oil reservoir

The three‐dimensional displacement of two‐phase flow in porous media is a preliminary problem of numerical simulation of energy science and mathematics. The mathematical model is formulated by a nonlinear system of partial differential equations to describe incompressible miscible case. The pressure is defined by an elliptic equation, and the concentration is defined by a convection‐dominated diffusion equation. The pressure generates Darcy velocity and controls the dynamic change of concentration. We adopt a conservative block‐centered scheme to approximate the pressure and Darcy velocity, and the accuracy of Darcy velocity is improved one order. We use a block‐centered upwind multistep method to solve the concentration, where the time derivative is approximated by multistep method, and the diffusion term and convection term are treated by a block‐centered scheme and an upwind scheme, respectively. The composite algorithm is effective to solve such a convection‐dominated problem, since numerical oscillation and dispersion are avoided and computational accuracy is improved. Block‐centered method is conservative, and the concentration and the adjoint function are computed simultaneously. This physical nature is important in numerical simulation of seepage fluid. Using the convergence theory and techniques of priori estimates, we derive optimal estimate error. Numerical experiments and data show the support and consistency of theoretical result. The argument in the present paper shows a powerful tool to solve the well‐known model problem.     

A robust finite difference scheme for strongly coupled systems of singularly perturbed convection‐diffusion equations

This paper is devoted to developing an Il'in‐Allen‐Southwell (IAS) parameter‐uniform difference scheme on uniform meshes for solving strongly coupled systems of singularly perturbed convection‐diffusion equations whose solutions may display boundary and/or interior layers, where strong coupling means that the solution components in the system are coupled together mainly through their first derivatives. By decomposing the coefficient matrix of convection term into the Jordan canonical form, we first construct an IAS scheme for 1D systems and then extend the scheme to 2D systems by employing an alternating direction technique. The robustness of the developed IAS scheme is illustrated through a series of numerical examples, including the magnetohydrodynamic duct flow problem with a high Hartmann number. Numerical evidence indicates that the IAS scheme appears to be formally second‐order accurate in the sense that it is second‐order convergent when the perturbation parameter ϵ is not too small and when ϵ is sufficiently small, the scheme is first‐order convergent in the discrete maximum norm uniformly in ϵ.     

A compact local one‐dimensional scheme for solving a 3D N‐carrier system with Neumann boundary conditions

We consider a mathematical model for thermal analysis in a 3D N‐carrier system with Neumann boundary conditions, which extends the concept of the well‐known parabolic two‐step model for micro heat transfer. To solve numerically the complex system, we first reduce 3D equations in the model to a succession of 1D equations by using the local one‐dimensional (LOD) method. The obtained 1D equations are then solved using a fourth‐order compact finite difference scheme for the interior points and a second‐order combined compact finite difference scheme for the points next to the boundary, so that the Neumann boundary condition can be applied directly without discretizing. By using matrix analysis, the compact LOD scheme is shown to be unconditionally stable. The accuracy of the solution is tested using two numerical examples. Results show that the solutions obtained by the compact LOD finite difference scheme are more accurate than those obtained by a Crank‐Nicholson LOD scheme, and the convergence rate with respect to spatial variables is about 2.6. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 2010     

Nonlinear Galerkin method and two-step method for the Navier-Stokes equations

This article represents a new nonlinear Galerkin scheme for the Navier-Stokes equations. This scheme consists of a nonlinear Galerkin finite element method and a two-step difference method. Moreover, we also provide a Galerkin scheme. By convergence analysis, two numerical schemes have the same second-order convergence accuracy for the spatial discretization and time discretization if H is chosen such that H = O(h^2/3). However, the nonlinear Galerkin scheme is simpler than the Galerkin scheme, namely, this scheme can save a large amount of computational time. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A new combined finite element‐upwind finite volume method for convection‐dominated diffusion problems

In this article, we develop a combined finite element‐weighted upwind finite volume method for convection‐dominated diffusion problems in two dimensions, which discretizes the diffusion term with the standard finite element scheme, and the convection and source terms with the weighted upwind finite volume scheme. The developed method leads to a totally new scheme for convection‐dominated problems, which overcomes numerical oscillation, avoids numerical dispersion, and has high‐order accuracy. Stability analyses of the scheme are given for the problems with constant coefficients. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the stability and optimal convergence of our proposed method. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 32: 799–818, 2016