A combined BDF‐semismooth Newton approach for time‐dependent Bingham flow

This article is devoted to the numerical simulation of time‐dependent convective Bingham flow in cavities. Motivated by a primal‐dual regularization of the stationary model, a family of regularized time‐dependent problems is introduced. Well posedness of the regularized problems is proved, and convergence of the regularized solutions to a solution of the original multiplier system is verified. For the numerical solution of each regularized multiplier system, a fully discrete approach is studied. A stable finite element approximation in space together with a second‐order backward differentiation formula for the time discretization are proposed. The discretization scheme yields a system of Newton differentiable nonlinear equations in each time step, for which a semismooth Newton algorithm is used. We present two numerical experiments to verify the main properties of the proposed approach. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2011     

Mathematical and numerical modellization of large‐scale oceanic waves

This paper is devoted to the theoretical and numerical study of a method which computes the variability of current and density in an oceanic domain. The equations are of Navier–Stokes type for the velocity and of transport‐diffusion type for the density. They are linearized around a given mean circulation and modified by physical assumptions including hydrostatic approximation. The existence and uniqueness of a solution are proved for two sets of equations: first the three‐dimensional problem and then the two‐dimensional cyclic problem derived by assuming a sinusoïdal x‐dependence for the perturbation of the mean flow. The latter corresponds to a modellization of tropical instability waves which are illustrated by the ‘El Nino’ phenomenon. These two problems differ from classical ones because of hydrostatic approximation, boundary conditions imposed by the oceanic domain and complex‐valued functions for the cyclic case. A numerical model is developed for the two‐dimensional cyclic equations. Time discretization is performed by the characteristics method; space discretization uses Q₁ finite elements. Numerical results are presented in a realistic case corresponding to the tropical Pacific Ocean. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons. Ltd.     

Variational discretization of Lavrentiev-regularized state constrained elliptic optimal control problems

In the present work, we apply a variational discretization proposed by the first author in (Comput. Optim. Appl. 30:45–61, 2005) to Lavrentiev-regularized state constrained elliptic control problems. We extend the results of (Comput. Optim. Appl. 33:187–208, 2006) and prove weak convergence of the adjoint states and multipliers of the regularized problems to their counterparts of the original problem. Further, we prove error estimates for finite element discretizations of the regularized problem and investigate the overall error imposed by the finite element discretization of the regularized problem compared to the continuous solution of the original problem. Finally we present numerical results which confirm our analytical findings.     

Numerical instabilities in structural optimization – analogy between topology & shape design problems

The formulation of structural optimization problems on the basis of the finite–element–method often leads to numerical instabilities resulting in non–optimal designs, which turn out to be difficult to realize from the engineering point of view. In the case of topology optimization problems the formation of designs characterized by oscillating density distributions such as the well–known “checkerboard–patterns” can be observed, whereas the solution of shape optimization problems often results in unfavourable designs with non–smooth boundary shapes caused by high–frequency oscillations of the boundary shape functions. Furthermore a strong dependence of the obtained designs on the finite–element–mesh can be observed in both cases. In this context we have already shown, that the topology design problem can be regularized by penalizing spatial oscillations of the density function by means of a penalty–approach based on the density gradient. In the present paper we apply the idea of problem regularization by penalizing oscillations of the design variable to overcome the numerical difficulties related to the shape design problem, where an analogous approach restricting the boundary surface can be introduced. (© 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

High‐order characteristic‐tracking strategy for simulation of a nonlinear advection–diffusion equation

In this study, new high‐order backward semi‐Lagrangian methods are developed to solve nonlinear advection–diffusion type problems, which are realized using high‐order characteristic‐tracking strategies. The proposed characteristic‐tracking strategies are second‐order L‐stable and third‐order L(α)‐stable methods, which are based on a classical implicit multistep method combined with a error‐correction method. We also use backward differentiation formulas and the fourth‐order finite‐difference scheme for diffusion problem discretization in the temporal and spatial domains, respectively. To demonstrate the adaptability and efficiency of these time‐discretization strategies, we apply these methods to nonlinear advection–diffusion type problems such as the viscous Burgers' equation. Through simulations, not only the temporal and spatial accuracies are numerically evaluated but also the proposed methods are shown to be superior to the compared existing characteristic‐tracking methods under the same rates of convergence in terms of accuracy and efficiency. Finally, we have shown that the proposed method well preserves the energy and mass when the viscosity coefficient becomes zero.     

Instability of the finite‐difference split‐step method applied to the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. I. standing soliton

We consider numerical instability that can be observed in simulations of solitons of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS) by a split‐step method (SSM) where the linear part of the evolution is solved by a finite‐difference discretization. The von Neumann analysis predicts that this method is unconditionally stable on the background of a constant‐amplitude plane wave. However, simulations show that the method can become unstable on the background of a soliton. We present an analysis explaining this instability. Both this analysis and the features and threshold of the instability are substantially different from those of the Fourier SSM, which computes the linear part of the NLS by a spectral discretization. For example, the modes responsible for the numerical instability are not similar to plane waves, as for the Fourier SSM or, more generally, in the von Neumann analysis. Instead, they are localized at the sides of the soliton. This also makes them different from “physical” (as opposed to numerical) unstable modes of nonlinear waves, which (the modes) are localized around the “core” of a solitary wave. Moreover, the instability threshold for thefinite‐difference split‐step method is considerably relaxed compared with that for the Fourier split‐step. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 32: 1002–1023, 2016     

Minimum time‐step criteria for the Galerkin finite element methods applied to one‐dimensional parabolic partial differential equations

The finite element method has been well established for numerically solving parabolic partial differential equations (PDEs). Also it is well known that a too large time step should not be chosen in order to obtain a stable and accurate numerical solution. In this article, accuracy analysis shows that a too small time step should not be chosen either for some time‐stepping schemes. Otherwise, the accuracy of the numerical solution cannot be improved or can even be worsened in some cases. Furthermore, the so‐called minimum time step criteria are established for the Crank‐Nicolson scheme, the Galerkin‐time scheme, and the backward‐difference scheme used in the temporal discretization. For the forward‐difference scheme, no minimum time step exists as far as the accuracy is concerned. In the accuracy analysis, no specific initial and boundary conditions are invoked so that such established criteria can be applied to the parabolic PDEs subject to any initial and boundary conditions. These minimum time step criteria are verified in a series of numerical experiments for a one‐dimensional transient field problem with a known analytical solution. The minimum time step criteria developed in this study are useful for choosing appropriate time steps in numerical simulations of practical engineering problems. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2006     

Spectral Approach to D‐bar Problems

We present the first numerical approach to D‐bar problems having spectral convergence for real analytic, rapidly decreasing potentials. The proposed method starts from a formulation of the problem in terms of an integral equation that is numerically solved with Fourier techniques. The singular integrand is regularized analytically. The resulting integral equation is approximated via a discrete system that is solved with Krylov methods. As an example, the D‐bar problem for the Davey‐Stewartson II equations is considered. The result is used to test direct numerical solutions of the PDE.© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Discretization of the Poisson equation with non‐smooth data and emphasis on non‐convex domains

Several approaches are discussed how to understand the solution of the Dirichlet problem for the Poisson equation when the Dirichlet data are non‐smooth such as if they are in only. For the method of transposition (sometimes called very weak formulation) three spaces for the test functions are considered, and a regularity result is proved. An approach of Berggren is recovered as the method of transposition with the second variant of test functions. A further concept is the regularization of the boundary data combined with the weak solution of the regularized problem. The effect of the regularization error is studied. The regularization approach is the simplest to discretize. The discretization error is estimated for a sequence of quasi‐uniform meshes. Since this approach turns out to be equivalent to Berggren's discretization his error estimates are rendered more precisely. Numerical tests show that the error estimates are sharp, in particular that the order becomes arbitrarily small when the maximal interior angle of the domain tends to .© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 32: 1433–1454, 2016     

Higher order numerical approximation for time dependent singularly perturbed differential‐difference convection‐diffusion equations

In this article, we develop a higher order numerical approximation for time dependent singularly perturbed differential‐difference convection‐diffusion equations. A priori bounds on the exact solution and its derivatives, which are useful for the error analysis of the numerical method are given. We approximate the retarded terms of the model problem using Taylor's series expansion and the resulting time‐dependent singularly perturbed problem is discretized by the implicit Euler scheme on uniform mesh in time direction and a special hybrid finite difference scheme on piecewise uniform Shishkin mesh in spatial direction. We first prove that the proposed numerical discretization is uniformly convergent of , where and denote the time step and number of mesh‐intervals in space, respectively. After that we design a Richardson extrapolation scheme to increase the order of convergence in time direction and then the new scheme is proved to be uniformly convergent of . Some numerical tests are performed to illustrate the high‐order accuracy and parameter uniform convergence obtained with the proposed numerical methods.     

Identifying initial condition of the Rayleigh‐Stokes problem with random noise

We investigate a backward problem for the Rayleigh‐Stokes problem, which aims to determine the initial status of some physical field such as temperature for slow diffusion from its present measurement data. This problem is well‐known to be ill‐posed because of the rapid decay of the forward process. We construct a regularized solution using the filter regularization method in the Gaussian random noise. Under some a priori assumptions on the exact solution, we establish the expectation between the exact solution and the regularized solution in the L² and H^m norms.     

Adaptive optimal control of Signorini’s problem

In this article, we present a-posteriori error estimations in context of optimal control of contact problems; in particular of Signorini’s problem. Due to the contact side-condition, the solution operator of the underlying variational inequality is not differentiable, yet we want to apply Newton’s method. Therefore, the non-smooth problem is regularized by penalization and afterwards discretized by finite elements. We derive optimality systems for the regularized formulation in the continuous as well as in the discrete case. This is done explicitly for Signorini’s contact problem, which covers linear elasticity and linearized surface contact conditions. The latter creates the need for treating trace-operations carefully, especially in contrast to obstacle contact conditions, which exert in the domain. Based on the dual weighted residual method and these optimality systems, we deduce error representations for the regularization, discretization and numerical errors. Those representations are further developed into error estimators. The resulting error estimator for regularization error is defined only in the contact area. Therefore its computational cost is especially low for Signorini’s contact problem. Finally, we utilize the estimators in an adaptive refinement strategy balancing regularization and discretization errors. Numerical results substantiate the theoretical findings. We present different examples concerning Signorini’s problem in two and three dimensions.     

Finite‐difference schemes for transport‐dominated equations using special collocation nodes

We introduce finite‐difference schemes based on a special upwind‐type collocation grid, in order to obtain approximations of the solution of linear transport‐dominated advection‐diffusion problems. The method is well suited when the diffusion parameter is very small compared to the discretization parameter. A theory is developed and many numerical experiments are shown. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2005     

Shape sensitivity analysis of a quasi‐electrostatic piezoelectric system in multilayered media

The optimization of shape and topology of piezo‐patches or layered piezo‐electrical material attached to structural parts, such as elastic bodies, plates and shells, plays a major role in the design of smart structures, as piezo‐mechanic‐acoustic devices in loudspeakers or energy harvesters. While the design for time‐harmonic motions is genuinely frequency‐dependent, as has been reported in the literature in the context of density optimization with the SIMP‐method, time‐varying piezoelectric material has not been investigated with respect to the optimal design so far. Therefore, shape sensitivities for layered piezoelectric material and time‐varying loads and charges are derived in this paper. In particular, we provide the shape‐derivatives for nested piezo‐layers associated with a class of shape functional. More general layers can be dealt with similar approach. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On regularized Hermitian splitting iteration methods for solving discretized almost‐isotropic spatial fractional diffusion equations

The shifted finite‐difference discretization of the one‐dimensional almost‐isotropic spatial fractional diffusion equation results in a discrete linear system whose coefficient matrix is a sum of two diagonal‐times‐Toeplitz matrices. For this kind of linear systems, we propose a class of regularized Hermitian splitting iteration methods and prove its asymptotic convergence under mild conditions. For appropriate circulant‐based approximation to the corresponding regularized Hermitian splitting preconditioner, we demonstrate that the induced fast regularized Hermitian splitting preconditioner possesses a favorable preconditioning property. Numerical results show that, when used to precondition Krylov subspace iteration methods such as generalized minimal residual and biconjugate gradient stabilized methods, the fast preconditioner significantly outperforms several existing ones.     

Semi‐implicit schemes for transient Navier–Stokes equations and eddy viscosity models

This study presents two computational schemes for the numerical approximation of solutions to eddy viscosity models as well as transient Navier–Stokes equations. The eddy viscosity model is one example of a class of Large Eddy Simulation models, which are used to simulate turbulent flow. The first approximation scheme is a first order single step method that treats the nonlinear term using a semi‐implicit discretization. The second scheme employs a two step approach that applies a Crank–Nicolson method for the nonlinear term while also retaining the semi‐implicit treatment used in the first scheme. A finite element approximation is used in the spatial discretization of the partial differential equations. The convergence analysis for both schemes is discussed in detail, and numerical results are given for two test problems one of which is the two dimensional flow around a cylinder. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2009     

Interaction of faults under slip‐dependent friction. Non‐linear eigenvalue analysis

We analyse the evolution of a system of finite faults by considering the non‐linear eigenvalue problems associated to static and dynamic solutions on unbounded domains. We restrict our investigation to the first eigenvalue (Rayleigh quotient). We point out its physical significance through a stability analysis and we give an efficient numerical algorithm able to compute it together with the corresponding eigenfunction. We consider the anti‐plane shearing on a system of finite faults under a slip‐dependent friction in a linear elastic domain, not necessarily bounded. The static problem is formulated in terms of local minima of the energy functional. We introduce the non‐linear (static) eigenvalue problem and we prove the existence of a first eigenvalue/eigenfunction characterizing the isolated local minima. For the dynamic problem, we discuss the existence of solutions with an exponential growth, to deduce a (dynamic) non‐linear eigenvalue problem. We prove the existence of a first dynamic eigenvalue and we analyse its behaviour with respect to the friction parameter. We deduce a mixed finite element discretization of the non‐linear spectral problem and we give a numerical algorithm to approach the first eigenvalue/eigenfunction. Finally we give some numerical results which include convergence tests, on a single fault and a two‐faults system, and a comparison between the non‐linear spectral results and the time evolution results. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quadratic Störmer‐type methods for the solution of the Boussinesq equation by the method of lines

We study the numerical treatment of Boussinesq PDE equation using the method of lines. For the space discretization, we choose either classical finite differences or Fourier pseudospectral methods. Both cases result in a system of second‐order ordinary differential equations (ODEs) that is quadratic. In order to take advantage of this special feature, we choose to solve the ODE system using a new type of hybrid Numerov method specially constructed for such problems. Other efficient ODE solvers taken from the literature are used to solve the system of ODEs as well. By taking all the combinations of space discretization methods and ODE solvers, we discuss the stability and accuracy features revealed from the numerical tests. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 2008     

Performance and numerical behavior of the second‐order scheme of precise time‐step integration for transient dynamic analysis

Spurious high‐frequency responses resulting from spatial discretization in time‐step algorithms for structural dynamic analysis have long been an issue of concern in the framework of traditional finite difference methods. Such algorithms should be not only numerically dissipative in a controllable manner, but also unconditionally stable so that the time‐step size can be governed solely by the accuracy requirement. In this article, the issue is considered in the framework of the second‐order scheme of the precise integration method (PIM). Taking the Newmark‐β method as a reference, the performance and numerical behavior of the second‐order PIM for elasto‐dynamic impact‐response problems are studied in detail. In this analysis, the differential quadrature method is used for spatial discretization. The effects of spatial discretization, numerical damping, and time step on solution accuracy are explored by analyzing longitudinal vibrations of a shock‐excited rod with rectangular, half‐triangular, and Heaviside step impact. Both the analysis and numerical tests show that under the framework of the PIM, the spatial discretization used here can provide a reasonable number of model types for any given error tolerance. In the analysis of dynamic response, an appropriate spatial discretization scheme for a given structure is usually required in order to obtain an accurate and meaningful numerical solution, especially for describing the fine details of traction responses with sharp changes. Under the framework of the PIM, the numerical damping that is often required in traditional integration schemes is found to be unnecessary, and there is no restriction on the size of time steps, because the PIM can usually produce results with machine‐like precision and is an unconditionally stable explicit method. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2007