The anti‐dissipative,non‐monotone behavior of Petrov–Galerkin upwinding

The Petrov–Galerkin method has been developed with the primary goal of damping spurious oscillations near discontinuities in advection dominated flows. For time‐dependent problems, the typical Petrov–Galerkin method is based on the minimization of the dispersion error and the simultaneous selective addition of dissipation. This optimal design helps to dampen the oscillations prevalent near discontinuities in standard Bubnov–Galerkin solutions. However, it is demonstrated that when the Courant number is less than 1, the Petrov–Galerkin method actually amplifies undershoots at the base of discontinuities. This is shown in an heuristic manner, and is demonstrated with numerical experiments with the scalar advection and Richards' equations. A discussion of monotonicity preservation as a design criterion, as opposed to phase or amplitude error minimization, is also presented. The Petrov–Galerkin method is further linked to the high‐resolution, total variation diminishing (TVD) finite volume method in order to obtain a monotonicity preserving Petrov–Galerkin method.