Stability and accuracy of time-extrapolated ADI-FDTD methods for solving wave equations

Some recent work on the ADI-FDTD method for solving Maxwell's equations in 3-D have brought out the importance of extrapolation methods for the time stepping of wave equations. Such extrapolation methods have previously been used for the solution of ODEs. The present context (of wave equations) brings up two main questions which have not been addressed previously: (1) when will extrapolation in time of an unconditionally stable scheme for a wave equation again feature unconditional stability, and (2) how will the accuracy and computational efficiency depend on how frequently in time the extrapolations are carried out. We analyze these issues here.     

Operator splitting methods for pricing American options under stochastic volatility

We consider the numerical pricing of American options under Heston’s stochastic volatility model. The price is given by a linear complementarity problem with a two-dimensional parabolic partial differential operator. We propose operator splitting methods for performing time stepping after a finite difference space discretization. The idea is to decouple the treatment of the early exercise constraint and the solution of the system of linear equations into separate fractional time steps. With this approach an efficient numerical method can be chosen for solving the system of linear equations in the first fractional step before making a simple update to satisfy the early exercise constraint. Our analysis suggests that the Crank–Nicolson method and the operator splitting method based on it have the same asymptotic order of accuracy. The numerical experiments show that the operator splitting methods have comparable discretization errors. They also demonstrate the efficiency of the operator splitting methods when a multigrid method is used for solving the systems of linear equations.     

Development of discontinuous Galerkin methods for Maxwell’s equations in metamaterials and perfectly matched layers

The discontinuous Galerkin method has proved to be an accurate and efficient way to numerically solve many differential equations. In this paper, we extend this method to solve the time-dependent Maxwell’s equations when metamaterials and perfectly matched layers are involved. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate that our method is not only simple to implement, but also quite effective in solving Maxwell’s equations in complex media.     

Semi-Lagrangian semi-implicit time-splitting scheme for a regional model of the atmosphere

Semi-Lagrangian semi-implicit (SLSI) method is currently one of the most efficient approaches for numerical solution of the atmosphere dynamics equations. In this research we apply splitting techniques in the context of a two-time-level SLSI scheme in order to simplify the treatment of the slow physical modes and optimize the solution of the elliptic equations related to implicit part of the scheme. The performed numerical experiments show the accuracy and computational efficiency of the scheme.     

High order compact Alternating Direction Implicit method for the generalized sine-Gordon equation

High order compact Alternating Direction Implicit scheme is given for solving the generalized sine-Gordon equation in a two-dimensional rectangular domain. We apply the compact finite difference operators to obtain a fourth order discretization for the second order space derivatives, and we give a linearized three time level algorithm for solving the original nonlinear equation. Error estimate is given by the energy method. Numerical results are provided to verify the accuracy and efficiency of this algorithm.     

Error and extrapolation of a compact LOD method for parabolic differential equations

This paper is concerned with a compact locally one-dimensional (LOD) finite difference method for solving two-dimensional nonhomogeneous parabolic differential equations. An explicit error estimate for the finite difference solution is given in the discrete infinity norm. It is shown that the method has the accuracy of the second-order in time and the fourth-order in space with respect to the discrete infinity norm. A Richardson extrapolation algorithm is developed to make the final computed solution fourth-order accurate in both time and space when the time step equals the spatial mesh size. Numerical results demonstrate the accuracy and the high efficiency of the extrapolation algorithm.     

Numerical solution of electromagnetic scattering from a large partly covered cavity

The paper focuses on the numerical study of electromagnetic scattering from two-dimensional (2D) large partly covered cavities, which is described by the Helmholtz equation with a nonlocal boundary condition on the aperture. The classical five-point finite difference method is applied for the discretization of the Helmholtz equation and a linear approximation is used for the nonlocal boundary condition. We prove the existence and uniqueness of the numerical solution when the medium in the cavity is y-direction layered or the number of the mesh points on the aperture is large enough. The fast algorithm proposed in Bao and Sun (2005) [2] for open cavity models is extended to solving the partly covered cavity problem with (vertically) layered media. A preconditioned Krylov subspace method is proposed to solve the partly covered cavity problem with a general medium, in which a layered medium model is used as a preconditioner of the general model. Numerical results for several types of partly covered cavities with different wave numbers are reported and compared with those by ILU-type preconditioning algorithms. Our numerical experiments show that the proposed preconditioning algorithm is more efficient for partly covered cavity problems, particularly with large wave numbers.     

High-order adaptive finite element-singly implicit Runge-Kutta methods for parabolic differential equations

We describe an adaptive mesh refinement finite element method-of-lines procedure for solving one-dimensional parabolic partial differential equations. Solutions are calculated using Galerkin's method with a piecewise hierarchical polynomial basis in space and singly implicit Runge-Kutta (SIRK) methods in time. A modified SIRK formulation eliminates a linear systems solution that is required by the traditional SIRK formulation and leads to a new reduced-order interpolation formula. Stability and temporal error estimation techniques allow acceptance of approximate solutions at intermediate stages, yielding increased efficiency when solving partial differential equations. A priori energy estimates of the local discretization error are obtained for a nonlinear scalar problem. A posteriori estimates of local spatial discretization errors, obtained by order variation, are used with the a priori error estimates to control the adaptive mesh refinement strategy. Computational results suggest convergence of the a posteriori error estimate to the exact discretization error and verify the utility of the adaptive technique.This research was partially supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Air Force Systems Command, USAF, under Grant Number AFOSR-90-0194; the U.S. Army Research Office under Contract Number DAAL 03-91-G-0215; by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number CDA-8805910; and by a grant from the Committee on Research, Tulane University.     

Solving the generalized regularized long wave equation on the basis of a reproducing kernel space

On the basis of a reproducing kernel space, an iterative algorithm for solving the generalized regularized long wave equation is presented. The analytical solution in the reproducing kernel space is shown in a series form and the approximate solution u_n is constructed by truncating the series to n terms. The convergence of u_n to the analytical solution is also proved. Results obtained by the proposed method imply that it can be considered as a simple and accurate method for solving such evolution equations.     

Finite element methods of an operator splitting applied to population balance equations

In population balance equations, the distribution of the entities depends not only on space and time but also on their own properties referred to as internal coordinates. The operator splitting method is used to transform the whole time-dependent problem into two unsteady subproblems of a smaller complexity. The first subproblem is a time-dependent convection-diffusion problem while the second one is a transient transport problem with pure advection. We use the backward Euler method to discretize the subproblems in time. Since the first problem is convection-dominated, the local projection method is applied as stabilization in space. The transport problem in the one-dimensional internal coordinate is solved by a discontinuous Galerkin method. The unconditional stability of the method will be presented. Optimal error estimates are given. Numerical tests confirm the theoretical results.     

The spectral methods for parabolic Volterra integro-differential equations

In this paper we study the numerical solutions to parabolic Volterra integro-differential equations in one-dimensional bounded and unbounded spatial domains. In a bounded domain, the given parabolic Volterra integro-differential equation is converted to two equivalent equations. Then, a Legendre-collocation method is used to solve them and finally a linear algebraic system is obtained. For an unbounded case, we use the algebraic mapping to transfer the problem on a bounded domain and then apply the same presented approach for the bounded domain. In both cases, some numerical examples are presented to illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method.     

Time stepping for vectorial operator splitting

We present a fully implicit finite difference method for the unsteady incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. It is based on the one-step θ-method for discretization in time and a special coordinate splitting (called vectorial operator splitting) for efficiently solving the nonlinear stationary problems for the solution at each new time level. The resulting system is solved in a fully coupled approach that does not require a boundary condition for the pressure. A staggered arrangement of velocity and pressure on a structured Cartesian grid combined with the fully implicit treatment of the boundary conditions helps us to preserve the properties of the differential operators and thus leads to excellent stability of the overall algorithm. The convergence properties of the method are confirmed via numerical experiments.     

A two-grid method for finite volume element approximations of second-order nonlinear hyperbolic equations

The two-grid method is studied for solving a two-dimensional second-order nonlinear hyperbolic equation using finite volume element method. The method is based on two different finite element spaces defined on one coarse grid with grid size H and one fine grid with grid size h, respectively. The nonsymmetric and nonlinear iterations are only executed on the coarse grid and the fine grid solution can be obtained in a single symmetric and linear step. It is proved that the coarse grid can be much coarser than the fine grid. A prior error estimate in the H¹-norm is proved to be O(h+H³|lnH|) for the two-grid semidiscrete finite volume element method. With these proposed techniques, solving such a large class of second-order nonlinear hyperbolic equations will not be much more difficult than solving one single linearized equation. Finally, a numerical example is presented to validate the usefulness and efficiency of the method.     

Dimension splitting for evolution equations

In this paper, we are concerned with splitting methods for the time integration of abstract evolution equations. We introduce an analytic framework which allows us to prove optimal convergence orders for various splitting methods, including the Lie and Peaceman–Rachford splittings. Our setting is applicable for a wide variety of linear equations and their dimension splittings. In particular, we analyze parabolic problems with Dirichlet boundary conditions, as well as degenerate equations on bounded domains. We further illustrate our theoretical results with a set of numerical experiments. This work was supported by the Austrian Science Fund under grant M961-N13.     

Locally linearized fractional step methods for nonlinear parabolic problems

This work deals with the efficient numerical solution of a class of nonlinear time-dependent reaction-diffusion equations. Via the method of lines approach, we first perform the spatial discretization of the original problem by applying a mimetic finite difference scheme. The system of ordinary differential equations arising from that process is then integrated in time with a linearly implicit fractional step method. For that purpose, we locally decompose the discrete nonlinear diffusion operator using suitable Taylor expansions and a domain decomposition splitting technique. The totally discrete scheme considers implicit time integrations for the linear terms while explicitly handling the nonlinear ones. As a result, the original problem is reduced to the solution of several linear systems per time step which can be trivially decomposed into a set of uncoupled parallelizable linear subsystems. The convergence of the proposed methods is illustrated by numerical experiments.     

Efficient large scale electromagnetic simulations using dynamically adapted meshes with the discontinuous Galerkin method

A framework for performing dynamic mesh adaptation with the discontinuous Galerkin method (DGM) is presented. Adaptations include modifications of the local mesh step size (h$h$-adaptation) and the local degree of the approximating polynomials (p$p$-adaptation) as well as their combination. The computation of the approximation within locally adapted elements is based on projections between finite element spaces (FES), which are shown to preserve an upper limit of the electromagnetic energy. The formulation supports high level hanging nodes and applies precomputation of surface integrals for increasing computational efficiency. Error and smoothness estimates based on interface jumps are presented and applied to the fully hp$hp$-adaptive simulation of two examples in one-dimensional space. A full wave simulation of electromagnetic scattering from a radar reflector demonstrates the applicability to large scale problems in three-dimensional space.     

Viscous splitting approximation of mixed hyperbolic-parabolic convection-diffusion equations

Summary. We first analyse a semi-discrete operator splitting method for nonlinear, possibly strongly degenerate, convection-diffusion equations. Due to strong degeneracy, solutions can be discontinuous and are in general not uniquely determined by their data. Hence weak solutions satisfying an entropy condition are sought. We then propose and analyse a fully discrete splitting method which employs a front tracking scheme for the convection step and a finite difference scheme for the diffusion step. Numerical examples are presented which demonstrate that our method can be used to compute physically correct solutions to mixed hyperbolic-parabolic convection-diffusion equations. Received November 4, 1997 / Revised version received June 22, 1998     

A communication-less parallel algorithm for tridiagonal Toeplitz systems

Diagonally dominant tridiagonal Toeplitz systems of linear equations arise in many application areas and have been well studied in the past. Modern interest in numerical linear algebra is often focusing on solving classic problems in parallel. In McNally [Fast parallel algorithms for tri-diagonal symmetric Toeplitz systems, MCS Thesis, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, 1999], an m processor Split & Correct algorithm was presented for approximating the solution to a symmetric tridiagonal Toeplitz linear system of equations. Nemani [Perturbation methods for circulant-banded systems and their parallel implementation, Ph.D. Thesis, University of New Brunswick, Saint John, 2001] and McNally (2003) adapted the works of Rojo [A new method for solving symmetric circulant tri-diagonal system of linear equations, Comput. Math. Appl. 20 (1990) 61–67], Yan and Chung [A fast algorithm for solving special tri-diagonal systems, Computing 52 (1994) 203–211] and McNally et al. [A split-correct parallel algorithm for solving tri-diagonal symmetric Toeplitz systems, Internat. J. Comput. Math. 75 (2000) 303–313] to the non-symmetric case. In this paper we present relevant background from these methods and then introduce an m processor scalable communication-less approximation algorithm for solving a diagonally dominant tridiagonal Toeplitz system of linear equations.     

Meshless local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) approximation to the two dimensional sine-Gordon equation

During the past few years, the idea of using meshless methods for numerical solution of partial differential equations (PDEs) has received much attention throughout the scientific community, and remarkable progress has been achieved on meshless methods. The meshless local Petrov-Galerkin (MLPG) method is one of the “truly meshless” methods since it does not require any background integration cells. The integrations are carried out locally over small sub-domains of regular shapes, such as circles or squares in two dimensions and spheres or cubes in three dimensions. In this paper the MLPG method for numerically solving the non-linear two-dimensional sine-Gordon (SG) equation is developed. A time-stepping method is employed to deal with the time derivative and a simple predictor-corrector scheme is performed to eliminate the non-linearity. A brief discussion is outlined for numerical integrations in the proposed algorithm. Some examples involving line and ring solitons are demonstrated and the conservation of energy in undamped SG equation is investigated. The final numerical results confirm the ability of proposed method to deal with the unsteady non-linear problems in large domains.