Adaptive finite elements with large aspect ratio for mass transport in electroosmosis and pressure‐driven microflows

A space–time adaptive method is presented for the numerical simulation of mass transport in electroosmotic and pressure‐driven microflows in two space dimensions. The method uses finite elements with large aspect ratio, which allows the electroosmotic flow and the mass transport to be solved accurately despite the presence of strong boundary layers. The unknowns are the external electric potential, the electrical double layer potential, the velocity field and the sample concentration. Continuous piecewise linear stabilized finite elements with large aspect ratio and the Crank–Nicolson scheme are used for the space and time discretization of the concentration equation. Numerical results are presented showing the efficiency of this approach, first in a straight channel, then in crossing and multiple T‐form configuration channels. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An adaptive algorithm for the Crank–Nicolson scheme applied to a time-dependent convection–diffusion problem

An a posteriori upper bound is derived for the nonstationary convection–diffusion problem using the Crank–Nicolson scheme and continuous, piecewise linear stabilized finite elements with large aspect ratio. Following Lozinski et al. (2009) [13], a quadratic time reconstruction is used.A space and time adaptive algorithm is developed to ensure the control of the relative error in the L²(H¹) norm. Numerical experiments illustrating the efficiency of this approach are reported; it is shown that the error indicator is of optimal order with respect to both the mesh size and the time step, even in the convection dominated regime and in the presence of boundary layers.