Robust a posteriori error estimates for conforming discretizations of a singularly perturbed reaction-diffusion problem on anisotropic meshes

In this paper, we derive robust a posteriori error estimates for conforming approximations to a singularly perturbed reaction-diffusion problem on anisotropic meshes, since the solution in general exhibits anisotropic features, e.g., strong boundary or interior layers. Based on the anisotropy of the mesh elements, we improve the a posteriori error estimates developed by Cheddadi et al., which are reliable and efficient on isotropic meshes but fail on anisotropic ones. Without the assumption that the mesh is shape-regular, the resulting mesh-dependent error estimator is shown to be reliable, efficient and robust with respect to the reaction coefficient, as long as the anisotropic mesh sufficiently reflects the anisotropy of the solution. We present our results in the framework of the vertex-centered finite volume method but their nature is general for any conforming one, like the piecewise linear finite element one. Our estimates are based on the usual H(div)-conforming, locally conservative flux reconstruction in the lowest-order Raviart-Thomas space on a dual mesh associated with the original anisotropic simplex one. Numerical experiments in 2D confirm that our estimates are reliable, efficient and robust on anisotropic meshes.     

Method for constructing meshes adapting to the solution of boundary value problems for ordinary differential equations of the second and fourth orders

To solve boundary value problems for ordinary differential equations of the second and fourth orders, we suggest a method for constructing a sequence of adaptively refined and coarsened meshes in a version of the finite element method with piecewise cubic Hermite basis functions. The construction of the meshes is based on C-norm estimates of the variation in the approximate solution or in the value of the functional to be minimized under the addition of a test point to a mesh interval or the deletion of a point from the current mesh. We present the results of numerical experiments used to assess the efficiency of the method. By way of example, problems whose solutions have singularities of the boundary layer type were used in these experiments. We carry out a comparison with a version of the method based on the uniform mesh refinement.     

The focal geometry of circular and conical meshes

Circular meshes are quadrilateral meshes all of whose faces possess a circumcircle, whereas conical meshes are planar quadrilateral meshes where the faces which meet in a vertex are tangent to a right circular cone. Both are amenable to geometric modeling – recently surface approximation and subdivision-like refinement processes have been studied. In this paper we extend the original defining property of conical meshes, namely the existence of face/face offset meshes at constant distance, to circular meshes. We study the close relation between circular and conical meshes, their vertex/vertex and face/face offsets, as well as their discrete normals and focal meshes. In particular we show how to construct a two-parameter family of circular (resp., conical) meshes from a given conical (resp., circular) mesh. We further discuss meshes which have both properties and their relation to discrete surfaces of negative Gaussian curvature. The offset properties of special quadrilateral meshes and the three-dimensional support structures derived from them are highly relevant for computational architectural design of freeform structures. Another aspect important for design is that both circular and conical meshes provide a discretization of the principal curvature lines of a smooth surface, so the mesh polylines represent principal features of the surface described by the mesh.      

Constructing orthogonal curvilinear meshes by solving initial value problems

Summary The purpose of this paper is to develop methods for constructing orthogonal curvilinear meshes suitable for solving partial differential equations over plane regions with smooth, curved boundaries. These curved meshes cover an annular strip along the boundary of the region which is included in the mesh. In this strip difference approximations of partial differential equations and boundary conditions can be set up as easily as they can for halfspace problems. The rest of the region and a suitable part of the annular strip can be covered by a square or rectangular mesh. In the present paper we consider the problem of determining curved meshes by solving nonlinear hyperbolic initial value problems which are formally related to the Cauchy-Riemann equations.This work was sponsored by the Swedish Institute for Applied Mathematics (ITM)     

Graded Meshes for Higher Order FEM

A singularly perturbed one-dimensional convection-diffusion problem is solved numerically by the finite element method based on higher order polynomials. Numerical solutions are obtained using S-type meshes with special emphasis on meshes which are graded (based on a mesh generating function) in the fine mesh region. Error estimates in the ε-weighted energy norm are proved. We derive an 'optimal' mesh generating function in order to minimize the constant in the error estimate. Two layer-adapted meshes defined by a recursive formulae in the fine mesh region are also considered and a new technique for proving error estimates for these meshes is presented. The aim of the paper is to emphasize the importance of using optimal meshes for higher order finite element methods. Numerical experiments support all theoretical results.     

Planar mesh refinement cannot be both local and regular

We show that two desirable properties for planar mesh refinement techniques are incompatible. Mesh refinement is a common technique for adaptive error control in generating unstructured planar triangular meshes for piecewise polynomial representations of data. Local refinements are modifications of the mesh that involve a fixed maximum amount of computation, independent of the number of triangles in the mesh. Regular meshes are meshes for which every interior vertex has degree 6. At least for some simple model meshing problems, optimal meshes are known to be regular, hence it would be desirable to have a refinement technique that, if applied to a regular mesh, produced a larger regular mesh. We call such a technique a regular refinement. In this paper, we prove that no refinement technique can be both local and regular. Our results also have implications for non-local refinement techniques such as Delaunay insertion or Rivara's refinement. Received August 1, 1996 / Revised version received February 28, 1997     

Computing arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian maps for evolving surfaces

The good mesh quality of a discretized closed evolving surface is often compromised during time evolution. In recent years this phenomenon has been theoretically addressed in a few ways, one of them uses arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) maps. However, the numerical computation of such maps still remained an unsolved problem in the literature. An approach, using differential algebraic problems, is proposed here to numerically compute an arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian map, which preserves the mesh properties over time. The ALE velocity is obtained by finding an equilibrium of a simple spring system, based on the connectivity of the nodes in the mesh. We also consider the algorithmic question of constructing acute surface meshes. We present various numerical experiments illustrating the good properties of the obtained meshes and the low computational cost of the proposed approach.     

Automatic parallel generation of tetrahedral grids by using a domain decomposition approach

An algorithm for the automatic parallel generation of three-dimensional unstructured grids based on geometric domain decomposition is proposed. A software package based on this algorithm is described. Examples of generating meshes for some application problems on a multiprocessor computer are presented. It is shown that the parallel algorithm can significantly (by a factor of several tens) reduce the mesh generation time. Moreover, it can easily generate meshes with as many as 5 × 10⁷ elements, which can hardly be generated sequentially. Issues concerning the speedup and the improvement of the efficiency of the computations and of the quality of the resulting meshes are discussed.     

Stochastic Domain Decomposition for Time Dependent Adaptive Mesh Generation

The efficient generation of meshes is an important component in the numerical solution of problems in physics and engineering. Of interest are situations where global mesh quality and a tight coupling to the solution of the physical partial differential equation (PDE) is important. We consider parabolic PDE mesh generation and present a method for the construction of adaptive meshes in two spatial dimensions using stochastic domain decomposition that is suitable for an implementation in a multi- or many-core environment. Methods for mesh generation on periodic domains are also provided. The mesh generator is coupled to a time dependent physical PDE and the system is evolved using an alternating solution procedure. The method uses the stochastic representation of the exact solution of a parabolic linear mesh generator to find the location of an adaptive mesh along the (artificial) subdomain interfaces. The deterministic evaluation of the mesh over each subdomain can then be obtained completely independently using the probabilistically computed solutions as boundary conditions. A small scaling study is provided to demonstrate the parallel performance of this stochastic domain decomposition approach to mesh generation. We demonstrate the approach numerically and compare the mesh obtained with the corresponding single domain mesh using a representative mesh quality measure.     

Calculating the vertex unknowns of nine point scheme on quadrilateral meshes for diffusion equation

In the construction of nine point scheme,both vertex unknowns and cell-centered unknowns are introduced,and the vertex unknowns are usually eliminated by using the interpolation of neighboring cell-centered unknowns,which often leads to lose accuracy.Instead of using interpolation,here we propose a different method of calculating the vertex unknowns of nine point scheme,which are solved independently on a new generated mesh.This new mesh is a Vorono¨i mesh based on the vertexes of primary mesh and some additional points on the interface.The advantage of this method is that it is particularly suitable for solving diffusion problems with discontinuous coeffcients on highly distorted meshes,and it leads to a symmetric positive definite matrix.We prove that the method has first-order convergence on distorted meshes.Numerical experiments show that the method obtains nearly second-order accuracy on distorted meshes.     

Anisotropic mesh generation methods based on ACVT and natural metric for anisotropic elliptic equation

Anisotropic meshes are known to be well-suited for problems which exhibit anisotropic solution features.Defning an appropriate metric tensor and designing an efcient algorithm for anisotropic mesh generation are two important aspects of the anisotropic mesh methodology.In this paper,we are concerned with the natural metric tensor for use in anisotropic mesh generation for anisotropic elliptic problems.We provide an algorithm to generate anisotropic meshes under the given metric tensor.We show that the inverse of the anisotropic difusion matrix of the anisotropic elliptic problem is a natural metric tensor for the anisotropic mesh generation in three aspects:better discrete algebraic systems,more accurate fnite element solution and superconvergence on the mesh nodes.Various numerical examples demonstrating the efectiveness are presented.     

New robust nonconforming finite elements of higher order

We show that existing quadrilateral nonconforming finite elements of higher order exhibit a reduction in the order of approximation if the sequence of meshes is still shape-regular but consists no longer of asymptotically affine equivalent mesh cells. We study second order nonconforming finite elements as members of a new family of higher order approaches which prevent this order reduction. We present a new approach based on the enrichment of the original polynomial space on the reference element by means of nonconforming cell bubble functions which can be removed at the end by static condensation. Optimal estimates of the approximation and consistency error are shown in the case of a Poisson problem which imply an optimal order of the discretization error. Moreover, we discuss the known nonparametric approach to prevent the order reduction in the case of higher order elements, where the basis functions are defined as polynomials on the original mesh cell. Regarding the efficient treatment of the resulting linear discrete systems, we analyze numerically the convergence of the corresponding geometrical multigrid solvers which are based on the canonical full order grid transfer operators. Based on several benchmark configurations, for scalar Poisson problems as well as for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations (representing the desired application field of these nonconforming finite elements), we demonstrate the high numerical accuracy, flexibility and efficiency of the discussed new approaches which have been successfully implemented in the FeatFlow software (www.featflow.de). The presented results show that the proposed FEM-multigrid combinations (together with discontinuous pressure approximations) appear to be very advantageous candidates for efficient simulation tools, particularly for incompressible flow problems.     

Local transformations of hexahedral meshes of lower valence

The modification of conforming hexahedral meshes is difficult to perform since their structure does not allow easy local refinement or un-refinement such that the modification does not go through the boundary. In this paper we prove that the set of hex flipping transformations of Bern et al. (2002) [1] is the only possible local modification on a geometrical hex mesh of valence less than five i.e., with less than five edges per vertex. We propose a new basis of transformations that can generate sequences of local modifications on hex meshes of valence less than six. For quadrilateral meshes, we show the equivalence between modifying locally the number of quads on a mesh and the number of its internal vertices.     

Finite Volume Methods for Multi-Symplectic PDES

We investigate the application of a cell-vertex finite volume discretization to multi-symplectic PDEs. The investigated discretization reduces to the Preissman box scheme when used on a rectangular grid. Concerning arbitrary quadrilateral grids, we show that only methods with parallelogram-like finite volume cells lead to a multi-symplectic discretization; i.e., to a method that preserves a discrete conservation law of symplecticity. One of the advantages of finite volume methods is that they can be easily adjusted to variable meshes. But, although the implementation of moving mesh finite volume methods for multi-symplectic PDEs is rather straightforward, the restriction to parallelogram-like cells implies that only meshes moving with a constant speed are multi-symplectic. To overcome this restriction, we suggest the implementation of reversible moving mesh methods based on a semi-Lagrangian approach. Numerical experiments are presented for a one dimensional dispersive shallow-water system.     

Efficient implementation of WENO schemes to nonuniform meshes

Most of the standard papers about the WENO schemes consider their implementation to uniform meshes only. In that case the WENO reconstruction is performed efficiently by using the algebraic expressions for evaluating the reconstruction values and the smoothness indicators from cell averages. The coefficients appearing in these expressions are constant, dependent just on the scheme order, not on the mesh size or the reconstruction function values, and can be found, for example, in Jiang and Shu (J Comp Phys 126:202–228, 1996). In problems where the geometrical properties must be taken into account or the solution has localized fine scale structure that must be resolved, it is computationally efficient to do local grid refinement. Therefore, it is also desirable to have numerical schemes, which can be applied to nonuniform meshes. Finite volume WENO schemes extend naturally to nonuniform meshes although the reconstruction becomes quite complicated, depending on the complexity of the grid structure. In this paper we propose an efficient implementation of finite volume WENO schemes to nonuniform meshes. In order to save the computational cost in the nonuniform case, we suggest the way for precomputing the coefficients and linear weights for different orders of WENO schemes. Furthermore, for the smoothness indicators that are defined in an integral form we present the corresponding algebraic expressions in which the coefficients obtained as a linear combination of divided differences arise. In order to validate the new implementation, resulting schemes are applied in different test examples.      

Additive Schwarz domain decomposition methods for elliptic problems on unstructured meshes

We give several additive Schwarz domain decomposition methods for solving finite element problems which arise from the discretizations of elliptic problems on general unstructured meshes in two and three dimensions. Our theory requires no assumption (for the main results) on the substructures which constitute the whole domain, so each substructure can be of arbitrary shape and of different size. The global coarse mesh is allowed to be non-nested to the fine grid on which the discrete problem is to be solved and both the coarse meshes and the fine meshes need not be quasi-uniform. In this general setting, our algorithms have the same optimal convergence rate of the usual domain decomposition methods on structured meshes. The condition numbers of the preconditioned systems depend only on the (possibly small) overlap of the substructures and the size of the coares grid, but is independent of the sizes of the subdomains.Revised version on Sept. 20, 1994. Original version: CAM Report 93-40, Dec. 1993, Dept. of Math., UCLA.The work of this author was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under contract ASC 92-01266, the Army Research Office under contract DAAL03-91-G-0150, and ONR under contract ONR-N00014-92-J-1890.The work of this author was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under contract ASC 92-01266, the Army Research Office under contract DAAL03-91-G-0150, and subcontract DAAL03-91-C-0047.     

Adaptive computation of smallest eigenvalues of self‐adjoint elliptic partial differential equations

We consider a new adaptive finite element (AFEM) algorithm for self‐adjoint elliptic PDE eigenvalue problems. In contrast to other approaches we incorporate the inexact solutions of the resulting finite‐dimensional algebraic eigenvalue problems into the adaptation process. In this way we can balance the costs of the adaptive refinement of the mesh with the costs for the iterative eigenvalue method. We present error estimates that incorporate the discretization errors, approximation errors in the eigenvalue solver and roundoff errors, and use these for the adaptation process. We show that it is also possible to restrict to very few iterations of a Krylov subspace solver for the eigenvalue problem on coarse meshes. Several examples are presented to show that this new approach achieves much better complexity than the previous AFEM approaches which assume that the algebraic eigenvalue problem is solved to full accuracy. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the adjacencies of triangular meshes based on skeleton-regular partitions

For any 2D triangulation τ, the 1-skeleton mesh of τ is the wireframe mesh defined by the edges of τ, while that for any 3D triangulation τ, the 1-skeleton and the 2-skeleton meshes, respectively, correspond to the wireframe mesh formed by the edges of τ and the “surface” mesh defined by the triangular faces of τ. A skeleton-regular partition of a triangle or a tetrahedra, is a partition that globally applied over each element of a conforming mesh (where the intersection of adjacent elements is a vertex or a common face, or a common edge) produce both a refined conforming mesh and refined and conforming skeleton meshes. Such a partition divides all the edges (and all the faces) of an individual element in the same number of edges (faces). We prove that sequences of meshes constructed by applying a skeleton-regular partition over each element of the preceding mesh have an associated set of difference equations which relate the number of elements, faces, edges and vertices of the nth and (n−1)th meshes. By using these constitutive difference equations we prove that asymptotically the average number of adjacencies over these meshes (number of triangles by node and number of tetrahedra by vertex) is constant when n goes to infinity. We relate these results with the non-degeneracy properties of longest-edge based partitions in 2D and include empirical results which support the conjecture that analogous results hold in 3D.     

Four-triangles adaptive algorithms for RTIN terrain meshes

We present a refinement and coarsening algorithm for the adaptive representation of Right-Triangulated Irregular Network (RTIN) meshes. The refinement algorithm is very simple and proceeds uniformly or locally in triangle meshes. The coarsening algorithm decreases mesh complexity by reducing unnecessary data points in the mesh after a given error criterion is applied. We describe the most important features of the algorithms and give a brief numerical study on the propagation associated with the adaptive scheme used for the refinement algorithm. We also present a comparison with a commercial tool for mesh simplification, Rational Reducer, showing that our coarsening algorithm offers better results in terms of accuracy of the generated meshes.     

A posteriori error estimators for optimal distributed control governed by the first‐order linear hyperbolic equation: DG method

In this article, We analyze the ‐version of the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (DGFEM) for the distributed first‐order linear hyperbolic optimal control problems. We derive a posteriori error estimators on general finite element meshes which are sharp in the mesh‐width . These error estimators are shown to be useful in adaptive finite element approximation for the optimal control problems. For the DGFEM we admit very general irregular meshes. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2011