A symmetric characteristic finite volume element scheme for nonlinear convection-diffusion problems

In this paper, we implement alternating direction strategy and construct a symmetric FVE scheme for nonlinear convection-diffusion problems. Comparing to general FVE methods, our method has two advantages. First, the coefficient matrices of the discrete schemes will be symmetric even for nonlinear problems. Second, since the solution of the algebraic equations at each time step can be inverted into the solution of several one-dimensional problems, the amount of computation work is smaller. We prove the optimal H ¹-norm error estimates of order O(Δt ² + h) and present some numerical examples at the end of the paper. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.10372052,10271066) and the Doctorate Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant No.20030422047).