Error estimates for a mixed finite element discretization of some degenerate parabolic equations

We consider a numerical scheme for a class of degenerate parabolic equations, including both slow and fast diffusion cases. A particular example in this sense is the Richards equation modeling the flow in porous media. The numerical scheme is based on the mixed finite element method (MFEM) in space, and is of one step implicit in time. The lowest order Raviart–Thomas elements are used. Here we extend the results in Radu et al. (SIAM J Numer Anal 42:1452–1478, 2004), Schneid et al. (Numer Math 98:353–370, 2004) to a more general framework, by allowing for both types of degeneracies. We derive error estimates in terms of the discretization parameters and show the convergence of the scheme. The features of the MFEM, especially of the lowest order Raviart–Thomas elements, are now fully exploited in the proof of the convergence. The paper is concluded by numerical examples.     

Combined higher order finite volume and finite element scheme for double porosity and non-linear adsorption of transport problem in porous media

In this work, a dual porosity model of reactive solute transport in porous media is presented. This model consists of a nonlinear-degenerate advection-diffusion equation including equilibrium adsorption to the reaction combined with a first-order equation for the non-equilibrium adsorption interaction processes. The numerical scheme for solving this model involves a combined high order finite volume and finite element scheme for approximation of the advection-diffusion part and relaxation-regularized algorithm for nonlinearity-degeneracy. The combined finite volume-finite element scheme is based on a new formulation developed by Eymard et al. (2010) [10]. This formulation treats the advection and diffusion separately. The advection is approximated by a second-order local maximum principle preserving cell-vertex finite volume scheme that has been recently proposed whereas the diffusion is approximated by a finite element method. The result is a conservative, accurate and very flexible algorithm which allows the use of different mesh types such as unstructured meshes and is able to solve difficult problems. Robustness and accuracy of the method have been evaluated, particularly error analysis and the rate of convergence, by comparing the analytical and numerical solutions for first and second order upwind approaches. We also illustrate the performance of the discretization scheme through a variety of practical numerical examples. The discrete maximum principle has been proved.     

Error estimates for mixed finite element discretization of the Richards equation

We present a numerical scheme based on the mixed finite element method (MFEM) for the Richards equation, a nonlinear, degenerate parabolic equation. Due to the degeneracy, the solution of the equation has low regularity and therefore only lower order finite elements are recommended. We review the main posibilities for proving the convergence of the scheme. Especially for the case without using the Kirchhoff transformation a new result is given. We also briefly discuss how to solve the nonlinear fully discrete problems appearing at each time step and refer to papers where the convergence of these methods is rigurously studied. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Error estimates for an Euler implicit-mixed finite element scheme for reactive transport in saturated/unsaturated soil

We present convergence results for a fully discrete scheme based on the mixed finite element (MFE) method and an one-step Euler implicit (EI) method for simulating reactive solute transport in saturated/unsaturated soil. The results considered the low regularity of the solution of the degenerate parabolic equation describing the water flow in porous media. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Approximation of a nonlinear degenerate parabolic equation via a linear relaxation scheme

We study a nonlinear degenerate parabolic equation of the type accompanied by an initial datum and mixed boundary conditions. The symbol [ · ]₊ denotes the usual cutoff function. The problem represents a model of a reactive solute transport in porous media. The exponent p fulfills p ∈ (0, 1). This limits the regularity of a solution and leads to inconveniences in the error analysis. We design a new robust linear numerical scheme for the time discretization. This is based on a suitable combination of the backward Euler method and a linear relaxation scheme. We prove the convergence of relaxation iterations on each time point t_i. We derive the error estimates in suitable function spaces for all values of p ∈ (0, 1). © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2005.     

Analysis of an Euler implicit‐mixed finite element scheme for reactive solute transport in porous media

In this article, we analyze an Euler implicit‐mixed finite element scheme for a porous media solute transport model. The transporting flux is not assumed given, but obtained by solving numerically the Richards equation, a model for subsurface fluid flow. We prove the convergence of the scheme by estimating the error in terms of the discretization parameters. In doing so we take into account the numerical error occurring in the approximation of the fluid flow. The article, is concluded by numerical experiments, which are in good agreement with the theoretical estimates. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2010     

Truncated regularized Newton method for convex minimizations

Recently, Li et al. (Comput. Optim. Appl. 26:131–147, 2004) proposed a regularized Newton method for convex minimization problems. The method retains local quadratic convergence property without requirement of the singularity of the Hessian. In this paper, we develop a truncated regularized Newton method and show its global convergence. We also establish a local quadratic convergence theorem for the truncated method under the same conditions as those in Li et al. (Comput. Optim. Appl. 26:131–147, 2004). At last, we test the proposed method through numerical experiments and compare its performance with the regularized Newton method. The results show that the truncated method outperforms the regularized Newton method. The work was supported by the 973 project granted 2004CB719402 and the NSF project of China granted 10471036.     

Convergence of a finite volume scheme for nonlinear degenerate parabolic equations

Summary. One approximates the entropy weak solution u of a nonlinear parabolic degenerate equation by a piecewise constant function using a discretization in space and time and a finite volume scheme. The convergence of to u is shown as the size of the space and time steps tend to zero. In a first step, estimates on are used to prove the convergence, up to a subsequence, of to a measure valued entropy solution (called here an entropy process solution). A result of uniqueness of the entropy process solution is proved, yielding the strong convergence of to{\it u}. Some on a model equation are shown. Received September 27, 2000 / Published online October 17, 2001     

An efficient explicit full-discrete scheme for strong approximation of stochastic Allen–Cahn equation

In Becker and Jentzen (2019) and Becker et al. (2017), an explicit temporal semi-discretization scheme and a space–time full-discretization scheme were, respectively, introduced and analyzed for the additive noise-driven stochastic Allen–Cahn type equations, with strong convergence rates recovered. The present work aims to propose a different explicit full-discrete scheme to numerically solve the stochastic Allen–Cahn equation with cubic nonlinearity, perturbed by additive space–time white noise. The approximation is easily implementable, performing the spatial discretization by a spectral Galerkin method and the temporal discretization by a kind of nonlinearity-tamed accelerated exponential integrator scheme. Error bounds in a strong sense are analyzed for both the spatial semi-discretization and the spatio-temporal full discretization, with convergence rates in both space and time explicitly identified. It turns out that the obtained convergence rate of the new scheme is, in the temporal direction, twice as high as existing ones in the literature. Numerical results are finally reported to confirm the previous theoretical findings.     

Modeling of solute transport into sub-aqueous sediments

A model for investigating the solute transport into a sub-aqueous sediment bed, under an imposed standing water surface wave, is developed. Under the assumption of Darcy flow in the bed, a model based on a two-dimensional, unsteady advection–diffusion equation is derived; the relative roles of the advective and diffusive transport are characterized by a Peclet number, Pe. Two solutions for the equation are developed. The first is a basic control volume method using the power-law scheme. The second is a smear-free, modified upwind solution for the special case of Pe → ∞. Results, at a given time step, are reported in terms of a laterally averaged solute verse depth profile. The main result of the paper is to demonstrate that the one-dimensional solute concentration verse depth profile is essentially independent of any numerical dissipation present in the solute field predictions. This demonstration is achieved by (i) using an extensive grid refinement study, and (ii) by comparing Pe → ∞ predictions obtained with the basic and smear-free solutions.     

Discrete Newton's method with local variations for solving large-scale nonlinear systems

A globally convergent discrete Newton method is proposed for solving large-scale nonlinear systems of equations. Advantage is taken from discretization steps so that the residual norm can be reduced while the Jacobian is approximated, besides the reduction at Newtonian iterations. The Curtis–Powell–Reid (CPR) scheme for discretization is used for dealing with sparse Jacobians. Global convergence is proved and numerical experiments are presented.     

Strong convergence of a stochastic Rosenbrock-type scheme for the finite element discretization of semilinear SPDEs driven by multiplicative and additive noise

This paper aims to investigate the numerical approximation of a general second order parabolic stochastic partial differential equation(SPDE) driven by multiplicative and additive noise. Our main interest is on such SPDEs where the nonlinear part is stronger than the linear part, usually called stochastic dominated transport equations. Most standard numerical schemes lose their good stability properties on such equations, including the current linear implicit Euler method. We discretize the SPDE in space by the finite element method and propose a novel scheme called stochastic Rosenbrock-type scheme for temporal discretization. Our scheme is based on the local linearization of the semi-discrete problem obtained after space discretization and is more appropriate for such equations. We provide a strong convergence of the new fully discrete scheme toward the exact solution for multiplicative and additive noise and obtain optimal rates of convergence. Numerical experiments to sustain our theoretical results are provided.     

Superlinear and quadratic convergence of some primal-dual interior point methods for constrained optimization

This paper proves local convergence rates of primal-dual interior point methods for general nonlinearly constrained optimization problems. Conditions to be satisfied at a solution are those given by the usual Jacobian uniqueness conditions. Proofs about convergence rates are given for three kinds of step size rules. They are: (i) the step size rule adopted by Zhang et al. in their convergence analysis of a primal-dual interior point method for linear programs, in which they used single step size for primal and dual variables; (ii) the step size rule used in the software package OB1, which uses different step sizes for primal and dual variables; and (iii) the step size rule used by Yamashita for his globally convergent primal-dual interior point method for general constrained optimization problems, which also uses different step sizes for primal and dual variables. Conditions to the barrier parameter and parameters in step size rules are given for each case. For these step size rules, local and quadratic convergence of the Newton method and local and superlinear convergence of the quasi-Newton method are proved. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the conference “Optimization-Models and Algorithms” held at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Tokyo, March 1993.     

Finite volume approximation of degenerate two‐phase flow model with unlimited air mobility

Models of two‐phase flows in porous media, used in petroleum engineering, lead to a coupled system of two equations, one elliptic and the other degenerate parabolic, with two unknowns: the saturation and the pressure. In view of applications in hydrogeology, we construct a robust finite volume scheme allowing for convergent simulations, as the ratio μ of air/liquid mobility goes to infinity. This scheme is shown to satisfy a priori estimates (the saturation is shown to remain in a fixed interval, and a discrete L2(0,T;H1(Ω)) estimate is proved for both the pressure and a function of the saturation), which are sufficient to derive the convergence of a subsequence to a weak solution of the continuous equations, as the size of the discretization tends to zero. We then show that the scheme converges to a two‐phase flow model whose limit, as the mobility of the air phase tends to infinity, is the “quasi‐Richards equation” (Eymard et al., Convergence of two phase flow to Richards model, F. Benkhaldoun, editor, Finite Volumes for Complex Applications IV, ISTE, London, 2005; Eymard et al., Discrete Cont Dynam Syst, 5 (2012) 93–113), which remains available even if the gas phase is not connected with the atmospheric pressure. Numerical examples, which show that the scheme remains robust for high values of μ, are finally given. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 2013     

Linearly Implicit Approximations of Diffusive Relaxation Systems

Diffusive relaxation systems provide a general framework to approximate nonlinear diffusion problems, also in the degenerate case (Aregba-Driollet et al. in Math. Comput. 73(245):63–94, 2004; Boscarino et al. in Implicit-explicit Runge-Kutta schemes for hyperbolic systems and kinetic equations in the diffusion limit, 2011; Cavalli et al. in SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 34:A137–A160, 2012; SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 45(5):2098–2119, 2007; Naldi and Pareschi in SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 37:1246–1270, 2000; Naldi et al. in Surveys Math. Indust. 10(4):315–343, 2002). Their discretization is usually obtained by explicit schemes in time coupled with a suitable method in space, which inherits the standard stability parabolic constraint. In this paper we combine the effectiveness of the relaxation systems with the computational efficiency and robustness of the implicit approximations, avoiding the need to resolve nonlinear problems and avoiding stability constraints on time step. In particular we consider an implicit scheme for the whole relaxation system except for the nonlinear source term, which is treated though a suitable linearization technique. We give some theoretical stability results in a particular case of linearization and we provide insight on the general case. Several numerical simulations confirm the theoretical results and give evidence of the stability and convergence also in the case of nonlinear degenerate diffusion.     

On the convergence of inexact Newton methods for discrete-time algebraic Riccati equations

In this paper, we present a convergence analysis of the inexact Newton method for solving Discrete-time algebraic Riccati equations (DAREs) for large and sparse systems. The inexact Newton method requires, at each iteration, the solution of a symmetric Stein matrix equation. These linear matrix equations are solved approximatively by the alternating directions implicit (ADI) or Smith?s methods. We give some new matrix identities that will allow us to derive new theoretical convergence results for the obtained inexact Newton sequences. We show that under some necessary conditions the approximate solutions satisfy some desired properties such as the d-stability. The theoretical results developed in this paper are an extension to the discrete case of the analysis performed by Feitzinger et al. (2009) [8] for the continuous-time algebraic Riccati equations. In the last section, we give some numerical experiments.     

Radial basis collocation method and quasi‐Newton iteration for nonlinear elliptic problems

This work presents a radial basis collocation method combined with the quasi‐Newton iteration method for solving semilinear elliptic partial differential equations. The main result in this study is that there exists an exponential convergence rate in the radial basis collocation discretization and a superlinear convergence rate in the quasi‐Newton iteration of the nonlinear partial differential equations. In this work, the numerical error associated with the employed quadrature rule is considered. It is shown that the errors in Sobolev norms for linear elliptic partial differential equations using radial basis collocation method are bounded by the truncation error of the RBF. The combined errors due to radial basis approximation, quadrature rules, and quasi‐Newton and Newton iterations are also presented. This result can be extended to finite element or finite difference method combined with any iteration methods discussed in this work. The numerical example demonstrates a good agreement between numerical results and analytical predictions. The numerical results also show that although the convergence rate of order 1.62 of the quasi‐Newton iteration scheme is slightly slower than rate of order 2 in the Newton iteration scheme, the former is more stable and less sensitive to the initial guess. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2008     

An efficient nonlinear iteration scheme for nonlinear parabolic–hyperbolic system

A nonlinear iteration method named the Picard–Newton iteration is studied for a two-dimensional nonlinear coupled parabolic–hyperbolic system. It serves as an efficient method to solve a nonlinear discrete scheme with second spatial and temporal accuracy. The nonlinear iteration scheme is constructed with a linearization–discretization approach through discretizing the linearized systems of the original nonlinear partial differential equations. It can be viewed as an improved Picard iteration, and can accelerate convergence over the standard Picard iteration. Moreover, the discretization with second-order accuracy in both spatial and temporal variants is introduced to get the Picard–Newton iteration scheme. By using the energy estimate and inductive hypothesis reasoning, the difficulties arising from the nonlinearity and the coupling of different equation types are overcome. It follows that the rigorous theoretical analysis on the approximation of the solution of the Picard–Newton iteration scheme to the solution of the original continuous problem is obtained, which is different from the traditional error estimate that usually estimates the error between the solution of the nonlinear discrete scheme and the solution of the original problem. Moreover, such approximation is independent of the iteration number. Numerical experiments verify the theoretical result, and show that the Picard–Newton iteration scheme with second-order spatial and temporal accuracy is more accurate and efficient than that of first-order temporal accuracy.     

Efficient numerical realization of discontinuous Galerkin methods for temporal discretization of parabolic problems

We present an efficient and easy to implement approach to solving the semidiscrete equation systems resulting from time discretization of nonlinear parabolic problems with discontinuous Galerkin methods of order $r$ . It is based on applying Newton’s method and decoupling the Newton update equation, which consists of a coupled system of $r+1$ elliptic problems. In order to avoid complex coefficients which arise inevitably in the equations obtained by a direct decoupling, we decouple not the exact Newton update equation but a suitable approximation. The resulting solution scheme is shown to possess fast linear convergence and consists of several steps with same structure as implicit Euler steps. We construct concrete realizations for order one to three and give numerical evidence that the required computing time is reduced significantly compared to assembling and solving the complete coupled system by Newton’s method.     

The convergence of fully discrete Galerkin approximations for the Benjamin–Bona–Mahony (BBM) equation

In the present paper, we analyze a second-order in time fully discrete finite element method for the BBM equation. The discretization in space is based on the standard Galerkin method, for the time discretization the Crank–Nicolson scheme is used. We also prove the convergence of a linearized Galerkin modification scheme.