A Collocation Code for Singular Boundary Value Problems in Ordinary Differential Equations

We present a MATLAB package for boundary value problems in ordinary differential equations. Our aim is the efficient numerical solution of systems of ODEs with a singularity of the first kind, but the solver can also be used for regular problems. The basic solution is computed using collocation methods and a new, efficient estimate of the global error is used for adaptive mesh selection. Here, we analyze some of the numerical aspects relevant for the implementation, describe measures to increase the efficiency of the code and compare its performance with the performance of established standard codes for boundary value problems.     

The role of conditioning in mesh selection algorithms for first order systems of linear two point boundary value problems

Codes for the numerical solution of two-point boundary value problems can now handle quite general problems in a fairly routine and reliable manner. When faced with particularly challenging equations, such as singular perturbation problems, the most efficient codes use a highly non-uniform grid in order to resolve the non-smooth parts of the solution trajectory. This grid is usually constructed using either a pointwise local error estimate defined at the grid points or else by using a local residual control. Similar error estimates are used to decide whether or not to accept a solution. Such an approach is very effective in general providing that the problem to be solved is well conditioned. However, if the problem is ill conditioned then such grid refinement algorithms may be inefficient because many iterations may be required to reach a suitable mesh on which to compute the solution. Even worse, for ill conditioned problems an inaccurate solution may be accepted even though the local error estimates may be perfectly satisfactory in that they are less than a prescribed tolerance. The primary reason for this is, of course, that for ill conditioned problems a small local error at each grid point may not produce a correspondingly small global error in the solution. In view of this it could be argued that, when solving a two-point boundary value problem in cases where we have no idea of its conditioning, we should provide an estimate of the condition number of the problem as well as the numerical solution. In this paper we consider some algorithms for estimating the condition number of boundary value problems and show how this estimate can be used in the grid refinement algorithm.     

A mixed finite volume scheme for anisotropic diffusion problems on any grid

We present a new finite volume scheme for anisotropic heterogeneous diffusion problems on unstructured irregular grids, which simultaneously gives an approximation of the solution and of its gradient. The approximate solution is shown to converge to the continuous one as the size of the mesh tends to 0, and an error estimate is given. An easy implementation method is then proposed, and the efficiency of the scheme is shown on various types of grids and for various diffusion matrices.     

Pathfollowing for essentially singular boundary value problems with application to the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation

We present a pathfollowing strategy based on pseudo-arclength parametrization for the solution of parameter-dependent boundary value problems for ordinary differential equations. We formulate criteria which ensure the successful application of this method for the computation of solution branches with turning points for problems with an essential singularity. The advantages of our approach result from the possibility to use efficient mesh selection, and a favorable conditioning even for problems posed on a semi-infinite interval and subsequently transformed to an essentially singular problem. This is demonstrated by a Matlab implementation of the solution method based on an adaptive collocation scheme which is well suited to solve problems of practical relevance. As one example, we compute solution branches for the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation which start from non-monotone ‘multi-bump’ solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Following the branches around turning points, real-valued solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation can easily be computed.     

Discontinuous Stable Elements for the Incompressible Flow

In this paper, we derive a discontinuous Galerkin finite element formulation for the Stokes equations and a group of stable elements associated with the formulation. We prove that these elements satisfy the new inf–sup condition and can be used to solve incompressible flow problems. Associated with these stable elements, optimal error estimates for the approximation of both velocity and pressure in L ² norm are obtained for the Stokes problems, as well as an optimal error estimate for the approximation of velocity in a mesh dependent norm.     

离散系统运动方程的Galerkin有限元EEP法自适应求解

对于结构动力分析中的离散系统运动方程,现有算法的计算精度和效率均依赖于时间步长的选取,这是时间域问题求解的难点.基于EEP(element energy projection)超收敛计算的自适应有限元法,以EEP超收敛解代替未知真解,估计常规有限元解的误差,并自动细分网格,目前已对诸类以空间坐标为自变量的边值问题取得成功.对离散系统运动方程建立弱型Galerkin有限元解,引入基于EEP法的自适应求解策略,在时间域上自动划分网格,最终得到所求时域内任一时刻均满足给定误差限的动位移解,进而建立了一种时间域上的新型自适应求解算法.     

A new mesh selection strategy for ODEs

In this paper a new mesh selection strategy, based on the conditioning properties of continuous problems, is presented. It turns out to be particularly efficient when approximating solutions of BVPs. The numerical methods used to test the reliability of the strategy are symmetric Linear Multistep Formulae (LMF) used as Boundary Value Methods (BVMs) since they provide a wide choice of methods of arbitrary high order and have similar stability properties to each other. In particular, we shall consider a subclass of such methods, called Top Order Methods (TOMs) (Amodio, 1996; Brugnano and Trigiante, 1995, 1996), to carry out the numerical results on some singular perturbation test problems.     

Efficient mesh selection for collocation methods applied to singular BVPs

We describe a mesh selection strategy for the numerical solution of boundary value problems for singular ordinary differential equations. This mesh adaptation procedure is implemented in our MATLAB code sbvp which is based on polynomial collocation. We prove that under realistic assumptions our mesh selection strategy serves to approximately equidistribute the global error of the collocation solution, thus enabling to reach prescribed tolerances efficiently. Moreover, we demonstrate that this strategy yields a favorable performance of the code and compare its computational effort with other implementations of polynomial collocation.     

Stepsize selection for tolerance proportionality in explicit Runge–Kutta codes

The potential for adaptive explicit Runge–Kutta (ERK) codes to produce global errors that decrease linearly as a function of the error tolerance is studied. It is shown that this desirable property may not hold, in general, if the leading term of the locally computed error estimate passes through zero. However, it is also shown that certain methods are insensitive to a vanishing leading term. Moreover, a new stepchanging policy is introduced that, at negligible extra cost, ensures a robust global error behaviour. The results are supported by theoretical and numerical analysis on widely used formulas and test problems. Overall, the modified stepchanging strategy allows a strong guarantee to be attached to the complete numerical process. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Adaptive finite element for semi-linear convection–diffusion problems

In this article a strategy of adaptive finite element for semi-linear problems, based on minimizing a residual-type estimator, is reported. We get an a posteriori error estimate which is asymptotically exact when the mesh size h tends to zero. By considering a model problem, the quality of this estimator is checked. It is numerically shown that without constraint on the mesh size h, the efficiency of the a posteriori error estimate can fail dramatically. This phenomenon is analysed and an algorithm which equidistributes the local estimators under the constraint h ⩽ h _max is proposed. This algorithm allows to improve the computed solution for semi-linear convection–diffusion problems, and can be used for stabilizing the Lagrange finite element method for linear convection–diffusion problems. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Mesh selection for stiff two-point boundary value problems

This paper is concerned with the mesh selection algorithm of COLSYS, a well known collocation code for solving systems of boundary value problems. COLSYS was originally designed to solve non-stiff and mildly stiff problems only. In this paper we show that its performance for solving extremely stiff problems can be considerably improved by modifying its error estimation and mesh selection algorithms. Numerical examples indicate the superiority of the modified algorithm.Dedicated to John Butcher on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday     

Results on Nonlocal Boundary Value Problems

In this article, we provide a variational theory for nonlocal problems where nonlocality arises due to the interaction in a given horizon. With this theory, we prove well-posedness results for the weak formulation of nonlocal boundary value problems with Dirichlet, Neumann, and mixed boundary conditions for a class of kernel functions. The motivating application for nonlocal boundary value problems is the scalar stationary peridynamics equation of motion. The well-posedness results support practical kernel functions used in the peridynamics setting.

We also prove a spectral equivalence estimate which leads to a mesh size independent upper bound for the condition number of an underlying discretized operator. This is a fundamental conditioning result that would guide preconditioner construction for nonlocal problems. The estimate is a consequence of a nonlocal Poincaré-type inequality that reveals a horizon size quantification. We provide an example that establishes the sharpness of the upper bound in the spectral equivalence.     

Adaptive multilevel finite element approximations of semilinear elliptic boundary value problems

Summary. In this paper we consider two aspects of the problem of designing efficient numerical methods for the approximation of semilinear boundary value problems. First we consider the use of two and multilevel algorithms for approximating the discrete solution. Secondly we consider adaptive mesh refinement based on feedback information from coarse level approximations. The algorithms are based on an a posteriori error estimate, where the error is estimated in terms of computable quantities only. The a posteriori error estimate is used for choosing appropriate spaces in the multilevel algorithms, mesh refinements, as a stopping criterion and finally it gives an estimate of the total error. Received April 8, 1997 / Revised version received July 27, 1998 / Published online September 24, 1999     

New a posteriori error estimates for singular boundary value problems

In this paper, we discuss the asymptotic properties and efficiency of several a posteriori estimates for the global error of collocation methods. Proofs of the asymptotic correctness are given for regular problems and for problems with a singularity of the first kind. We were also strongly interested in finding out which of our error estimates can be applied for the efficient solution of boundary value problems in ordinary differential equations with an essential singularity. Particularly, we compare estimates based on the defect correction principle with a strategy based on mesh halving. AMS subject classification 65L05Supported in part by the Austrian Research Fund (FWF) grant P-15072-MAT and SFB Aurora.     

Uniform Convergence Analysis for Singularly Perturbed Elliptic Problems with Parabolic Layers

In this paper,using Lin's integral identity technique,we prove the optimal uniform convergence θ(N_x~(-2)In~2N_x N_y~(-2)In~2N_y) in the L~2-norm for singularly per- turbed problems with parabolic layers.The error estimate is achieved by bilinear fi- nite elements on a Shishkin type mesh.Here N_x and N_y are the number of elements in the x- and y-directions,respectively.Numerical results are provided supporting our theoretical analysis.     

Adaptive mesh point selection for the efficient solution of scalar IVPs

We discuss adaptive mesh point selection for the solution of scalar initial value problems. We consider a method that is optimal in the sense of the speed of convergence, and we aim at minimizing the local errors. Although the speed of convergence cannot be improved by using the adaptive mesh points compared to the equidistant points, we show that the factor in the error expression can be significantly reduced. We obtain formulas specifying the gain achieved in terms of the number of discretization subintervals, as well as in terms of the prescribed level of the local error. Both nonconstructive and constructive versions of the adaptive mesh selection are shown, and a numerical example is given.     

The error‐minimization‐based rezone strategy for arbitrary Lagrangian‐Eulerian methods

The objective of the Arbitrary Lagrangian‐Eulerian (ALE) methodology for solving multidimensional fluid flow problems is to move the computational mesh, using the flow as a guide, to improve the robustness, accuracy and efficiency of a simulation. The main elements in the ALE simulation are an explicit Lagrangian phase, a rezone phase in which a new mesh is defined, and a remapping (conservative interpolation) phase, in which the Lagrangian solution is transferred to the new mesh. In most ALE codes, the main goal of the rezone phase is to maintain high quality of the rezoned mesh. In this article, we describe a new rezone strategy which minimizes the L₂ norm of the solution error and maintains smoothness of the mesh. The efficiency of the new method is demonstrated with numerical experiments. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2005     

Local problems on stars: A posteriori error estimators, convergence, and performance

A new computable a posteriori error estimator is introduced, which relies on the solution of small discrete problems on stars. It exhibits built-in flux equilibration and is equivalent to the energy error up to data oscillation without any saturation assumption. A simple adaptive strategy is designed, which simultaneously reduces error and data oscillation, and is shown to converge without mesh pre-adaptation nor explicit knowledge of constants. Numerical experiments reveal a competitive performance, show extremely good effectivity indices, and yield quasi-optimal meshes.

     

Continuous-discontinuous finite element method for convection-diffusion problems with characteristic layers

We study convergence properties of a numerical method for convection-diffusion problems with characteristic layers on a layer-adapted mesh. The method couples standard Galerkin with an h-version of the nonsymmetric discontinuous Galerkin finite element method with bilinear elements. In an associated norm, we derive the error estimate as well as the supercloseness result that are uniform in the perturbation parameter. Applying a post-processing operator for the discontinuous Galerkin method, we construct a new numerical solution with enhanced convergence properties.     

Efficient Collocation Schemes for Singular Boundary Value Problems

We discuss an error estimation procedure for the global error of collocation schemes applied to solve singular boundary value problems with a singularity of the first kind. This a posteriori estimate of the global error was proposed by Stetter in 1978 and is based on the idea of Defect Correction, originally due to Zadunaisky. Here, we present a new, carefully designed modification of this error estimate which not only results in less computational work but also appears to perform satisfactorily for singular problems. We give a full analytical justification for the asymptotical correctness of the error estimate when it is applied to a general nonlinear regular problem. For the singular case, we are presently only able to provide computational evidence for the full convergence order, the related analysis is still work in progress. This global estimate is the basis for a grid selection routine in which the grid is modified with the aim to equidistribute the global error. This procedure yields meshes suitable for an efficient numerical solution. Most importantly, we observe that the grid is refined in a way reflecting only the behavior of the solution and remains unaffected by the unsmooth direction field close to the singular point.