n-sided polygonal hybrid finite elements with unified fundamental solution kernels for topology optimization

In topology optimization, the optimized design can be obtained based on spatial discretization of design domain using natural polygonal finite elements to reduce the influence of mesh geometry on topology optimization solutions. However, the natural polygonal finite elements require separate interpolants for each type of elements and involve troublesome domain integrals. In this study, an alternative n-sided polygonal hybrid finite element possessing multiple-node connection is formulated in a unified form to compress the checkerboard patterns caused by numerical instability in topology optimization. Different from the natural polygonal finite elements, the present polygonal hybrid finite elements involve two sets of independent displacement fields. The intra-element displacement field defined inside the element is approximated by the linear combination of the fundamental solution of the problem to achieve the purpose of the local satisfaction of the governing equations of the problem, but not the specific boundary conditions and the inter-element continuity conditions. To overcome such drawback, the inter-element displacement field defined over the entire element boundary is independently approximated by means of the conventional shape function interpolation. As a result, only line integrals along the element boundary are involved in the computation, whose dimension is reduced by one compared to the domain integrals in the natural polygonal finite elements, and more importantly, allowing us to flexibly construct any polygons from Voronoi tessellations in discretizing complex design domains using same fundamental solution kernels. Numerical results obtained indicate that the present n-sided polygonal hybrid finite elements can produce more accurate displacement solutions and smaller mean compliance, compared to the standard finite elements and the natural polygonal finite elements.     

A two-level additive Schwarz preconditioner for the stationary Stokes equations

We consider the stationary Stokes equations on a polygonal domain whose boundary has more than one component, i.e., flow with obstacles. A two-level additive Schwarz preconditioner is developed for the divergence-free nonconforming P1 finite element. The condition number of the preconditioned system is shown to be bounded independent of mesh sizes and the number of subdomains in the case of generous overlap.This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. DMS-92-09332 and DMS-94-96275.     

基于非协调元的区域分解法

基于非协调元的区域分解法戴培良，沈树民（常熟高专）（苏州大学）ＡＤＯＭＡＩＮＤＥＣＯＭＰＯＳＩＴＩＯＮＭＥＴＨＯＤＢＡＳＥＤＯＮＮＯＮＣＯＮＦＯＲＭＩＮＧＦＩＮＩＴＥＥＬＥＭＥＮＴＳ￥ＤａｉＰｅｉ－ｈａｎｇ；ＳｈｅｎＳｈｕ－ｍｉｎ（ＣｈａｎｇｓｈｕＣ...     

Parabolic finite volume element equations in nonconvex polygonal domains

We study spatially semidiscrete and fully discrete finite volume element approximations of the heat equation with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions in a plane polygonal domain with one reentrant corner. We show that, as a result of the singularity in the solution near the reentrant corner, the convergence rate is reduced from optimal second order, similarly to what was shown for the finite element method in the earlier work 2 . Optimal order convergence may be restored by mesh refinement near the corners of the domain. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2009     

A direct boundary integral equation method for transmission problems

A system of integral equations for the field and its normal derivative on the boundary in acoustic or potential scattering by a penetrable homogeneous object in arbitrary dimensions is presented. The system contains the operators of the single and double layer potentials, of the normal derivative of the single layer, and of the normal derivative of the double layer potential. It defines a strongly elliptic system of pseudodifferential operators. It is shown by the method of Mellin transformation that a corresponding property, namely a Gårding's inequality in the energy norm, holds also in the case of a polygonal boundary of a plane domain. This yields asymptotic quasioptimal error estimates in Sobolev spaces for the corresponding Galerkin approximation using finite elements on the boundary only.     

A direct boundary integral equation method for transmission problems

A system of integral equations for the field and its normal derivative on the boundary in acoustic or potential scattering by a penetrable homogeneous object in arbitrary dimensions is presented. The system contains the operators of the single and double layer potentials, of the normal derivative of the single layer, and of the normal derivative of the double layer potential. It defines a strongly elliptic system of pseudodifferential operators. It is shown by the method of Mellin transformation that a corresponding property, namely a Gårding's inequality in the energy norm, holds also in the case of a polygonal boundary of a plane domain. This yields asymptotic quasioptimal error estimates in Sobolev spaces for the corresponding Galerkin approximation using finite elements on the boundary only.     

Shape calculus and finite element method in smooth domains

The use of finite elements in smooth domains leads naturally to polyhedral or piecewise polynomial approximations of the boundary. Hence the approximation error consists of two parts: the geometric part and the finite element part. We propose to exploit this decomposition in the error analysis by introducing an auxiliary problem defined in a polygonal domain approximating the original smooth domain. The finite element part of the error can be treated in the standard way. To estimate the geometric part of the error, we need quantitative estimates related to perturbation of the geometry. We derive such estimates using the techniques developed for shape sensitivity analysis.     

On the Finite Element Analysis of Problems with Nonlinear Newton Boundary Conditions in Nonpolygonal Domains

The paper is concerned with the study of an elliptic boundary value problem with a nonlinear Newton boundary condition considered in a two-dimensional nonpolygonal domain with a curved boundary. The existence and uniqueness of the solution of the continuous problem is a consequence of the monotone operator theory. The main attention is paid to the effect of the basic finite element variational crimes: approximation of the curved boundary by a polygonal one and the evaluation of integrals by numerical quadratures. With the aid of some important properties of Zlamal's ideal triangulation and interpolation, the convergence of the method is analyzed.     

The local superconvergence of the quadratic triangular element for the poisson problem in a polygonal domain

It is the first time for us to combine the local symmetric technique and the weak estimates to investigate the local superconvergence of the finite element method for the Poisson equation in a bounded domain with polygonal boundary where a uniform family of partitions is not required or the solution need not have high global smoothness. Combining a uniform family of triangulations in the interior of domain with a quasiuniform family of triangulations at the boundary of domain, we present a special family of triangulations. By the finite element theory of the derivative of the Green's function presented in this article, we combine the local symmetric technique and the weak estimates to obtain the local superconvergence of the derivative for the quadratic elements. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 30: 1854–1876, 2014     

Multi-parameter extrapolation methods for boundary integral equations

Multi-parameter extrapolation was first introduced by Zhou et al. for solving partial differential equations with finite element methods in 1994. The method is based on a domain decomposition and independent discretization of the subdomains resulting in a multi-parameter error expansion. This permits a generalized extrapolation technique. The algorithm is naturally parallel since the main computational work is spent in solving independent linear systems. Here the method is extended to the case of boundary integral equations on polygonal domains, where singularities require graded meshes. A complete analysis is given, based on weighted norm techniques. Several numerical experiments demonstrate the mathematical features and practical usefulness of the method. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Dual Singular Function Method for 2D Boundary Integral Equations

The accuracy of standard boundary element methods for elliptic boundary value problems deteriorates if the boundary of the domain contains corners or if the boundary conditions change along the boundary. Here we first investigate the convergence behaviour of standard spline Galerkin approximation on quasi-uniform meshes for boundary integral equations on polygonal domains. It turns out, that the order of convergence depends on some constant describing the singular behaviour of solutions near corner points of the boundary. In order to recover the full order of convergence for the Galerkin approximation we propose the dual singular function method which is often used for improving the accuracy of finite element methods. The theoretical convergence results are confirmed and illustrated by a numerical example.     

Composite finite element approximation for nonlinear parabolic problems in nonconvex polygonal domains

We study a new class of finite elements so‐called composite finite elements (CFEs), introduced earlier by Hackbusch and Sauter, Numer. Math., 1997; 75:447‐472, for the approximation of nonlinear parabolic equation in a nonconvex polygonal domain. A two‐scale CFE discretization is used for the space discretizations, where the coarse‐scale grid discretized the domain at an appropriate distance from the boundary and the fine‐scale grid is used to resolve the boundary. A continuous, piecewise linear CFE space is employed for the spatially semidiscrete finite element approximation and the temporal discretizations is based on modified linearized backward Euler scheme. We derive almost optimal‐order convergence in space and optimal order in time for the CFE method in the L^∞(L²) norm. Numerical experiment is carried out for an L‐shaped domain to illustrate our theoretical findings.     

Error Analysis of Galerkin Methods for Dirichlet Problems Containing Boundary Singularities

This paper deals with a two-dimensional Poisson problem definedin a polygonal domain and having inhomogeneous Dirichlet boundaryconditions. A Galerking method for obtaining approximationsusing triangular finite elements is described. The situationwhen the exact solution contains a singularity at a re-entrantcorner of the boundary is considered, and for this an O(h) boundon the error in the Galerkin approximation is derived.     

ERROR ESTIMATES FOR TWO-SCALE COMPOSITE FINITE ELEMENT APPROXIMATIONS OF NONLINEAR PARABOLIC EQUATIONS

We study spatially semidiscrete and fully discrete two-scale composite finite element method for approximations of the nonlinear parabolic equations with homogeneous Dirich-let boundary conditions in a convex polygonal domain in the plane.This new class of finite elements,which is called composite finite elements,was first introduced by Hackbusch and Sauter[Numer.Math.,75(1997),pp.447-472]for the approximation of partial differential equations on domains with complicated geometry.The aim of this paper is to introduce an efficient numerical method which gives a lower dimensional approach for solving par-tial differential equations by domain discretization method.The composite finite element method introduces two-scale grid for discretization of the domain,the coarse-scale and the fine-scale grid with the degrees of freedom lies on the coarse-scale grid only.While the fine-scale grid is used to resolve the Dirichlet boundary condition,the dimension of the finite element space depends only on the coarse-scale grid.As a consequence,the resulting linear system will have a fewer number of unknowns.A continuous,piecewise linear composite finite element space is employed for the space discretization whereas the time discretization is based on both the backward Euler and the Crank-Nicolson methods.We have derived the error estimates in the L∞(L2)-norm for both semidiscrete and fully discrete schemes.Moreover,numerical simulations show that the proposed method is an efficient method to provide a good approximate solution.     

Boundary conforming Delaunay mesh generation

A boundary conforming Delaunay mesh is a partitioning of a polyhedral domain into Delaunay simplices such that all boundary simplices satisfy the generalized Gabriel property. It’s dual is a Voronoi partition of the same domain which is preferable for Voronoi-box based finite volume schemes. For arbitrary 2D polygonal regions, such meshes can be generated in optimal time and size. For arbitrary 3D polyhedral domains, however, this problem remains a challenge. The main contribution of this paper is to show that boundary conforming Delaunay meshes for 3D polyhedral domains can be generated efficiently when the smallest input angle of the domain is bounded by arccos 1/3 ≈ 70.53°. In addition, well-shaped tetrahedra and an appropriate mesh size can be obtained. Our new results are achieved by reanalyzing a classical Delaunay refinement algorithm. Note that our theoretical guarantee on the input angle (70.53°) is still too strong for many practical situations. We further discuss variants of the algorithm to relax the input angle restriction and to improve the mesh quality.     

Direct and inverse error estimates for finite elements with mesh refinements

The finite element method is used to solve a second order elliptic boundary value problem on a polygonal domain. Mesh refinements and weighted Besov spaces are used to obtain optimal error estimates and inverse theorems.Research performed while at the University of Maryland under a Fulbright fellowshipResearch supported in part by the Department of Energy under the contract E(40-1)3443Research supported in part by the National Institutes of Health under the grant 5R01-AM-20373     

A finite element method for interface problems in domains with smooth boundaries and interfaces

This paper is concerned with the analysis of a finite element method for nonhomogeneous second order elliptic interface problems on smooth domains. The method consists in approximating the domains by polygonal domains, transferring the boundary data in a natural way, and then applying a finite element method to the perturbed problem on the approximate polygonal domains. It is shown that the error in the finite element approximation is of optimal order for linear elements on a quasiuniform triangulation. As such the method is robust in the regularity of the data in the original problem.     

On the solution of Maxwell's equations in polygonal domains

This paper is concerned with the structure of the singular and regular parts of the solution of time‐harmonic Maxwell's equations in polygonal plane domains and their effective numerical treatment. The asymptotic behaviour of the solution near corner points of the domain is studied by means of discrete Fourier transformation and it is proved that the solution of the boundary value problem does not belong locally to H² when the boundary of the domain has non‐acute angles. A splitting of the solution into a regular part belonging to the space H², and an explicitly described singular part is presented. For the numerical treatment of the boundary value problem, we propose a finite element discretization which combines local mesh grading and the singular field methods and derive a priori error estimates that show optimal convergence as known for the classical finite element method for problems with regular solutions. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nonobtuse local tetrahedral refinements towards a polygonal face/interface

In this note we show how to generate and conformally refine nonobtuse tetrahedral meshes locally in the neighbourhood of a polygonal face or a polygonal interior interface of a three-dimensional domain. The technique proposed can be used for example for problems with boundary and/or interior layers, and for interface problems.     

On the finite element method for elliptic problems with degenerate and singular coefficients

We consider Dirichlet boundary value problems for second order elliptic equations over polygonal domains. The coefficients of the equations under consideration degenerate at an inner point of the domain, or behave singularly in the neighborhood of that point. This behavior may cause singularities in the solution. The solvability of the problems is proved in weighted Sobolev spaces, and their approximation by finite elements is studied. This study includes regularity results, graded meshes, and inverse estimates. Applications of the theory to some problems appearing in quantum mechanics are given. Numerical results are provided which illustrate the theory and confirm the predicted rates of convergence of the finite element approximations for quasi-uniform meshes.