An approximation of incompressible miscible displacement in porous media by mixed finite elements and symmetric finite volume element method of characteristics

A nonlinear system of two coupled partial differential equations models miscible displacement of one incompressible fluid by another in a porous medium. A sequential implicit time‐stepping procedure is defined, in which the pressure and Darcy velocity of the mixture are approximated by a mixed finite element method and the concentration is approximated by a combination of a modified symmetric finite volume element method and the method of characteristics. Optimal order convergence in H¹ and in L² are proved for full discrete schemes. Finally, some numerical experiments are presented. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2013     

Finite volume element approximations of nonlocal reactive flows in porous media

In this article, we study finite volume element approximations for two‐dimensional parabolic integro‐differential equations, arising in the modeling of nonlocal reactive flows in porous media. These types of flows are also called NonFickian flows and exhibit mixing length growth. For simplicity, we consider only linear finite volume element methods, although higher‐order volume elements can be considered as well under this framework. It is proved that the finite volume element approximations derived are convergent with optimal order in H¹‐ and L²‐norm and are superconvergent in a discrete H¹‐norm. By examining the relationship between finite volume element and finite element approximations, we prove convergence in L^∞‐ and W^1,∞‐norms. These results are also new for finite volume element methods for elliptic and parabolic equations. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 16: 285–311, 2000     

一类半线性对流扩散问题特征-有限体积法H1模误差估计

1引言有限体积法是由Baliga和Patankar提出的一种数值求解偏微分方程,特别是物理学中保持守恒律方程的有效方法．由于其运用原方程的体积积分公式和有限控制体积来离散方程．使方程在控制体积上保持守恒律这一重要的物理特性,自出现以来,有了很大的发展([2-4],[10])．特征线方法([1],[8],[9])则是一种非常适合求解对流占优扩散方程的数值     

Error estimates of finite volume element method for the pollution in groundwater flow

In this article, we study the finite volume element methods for numerical solution of the pollution in groundwater flow in a two‐dimensional convex polygonal domain. These type flow are uniform transport in a fully saturated incompressible porous media, which may be anisotropic with respect to hydraulic conductivity, but features a direction independent of dispersivity. A fully finite volume scheme is analyzed in this article. The discretization is defined via a planar mesh consisting of piecewise triangles. Optimal order error estimates in H¹ and L² norms are obtained. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2009     

Superconvergent error estimates for a class of discretization methods for a coupled first‐order system with discontinuous coefficients

Lithological discontinuities in a reservoir generate discontinuous coefficients for the first‐order system of equations used in the simulation of fluid flow in porous media. Systems of conservation laws with discontinuous coefficients also arise in many other physical applications. In this article, we present a class of discretization schemes that include variants of mixed finite element methods, finite volume element methods, and cell‐centered finite difference equations as special cases. Error estimates of the order O(h²) in certain discrete L²‐norms are established for both the primary independent variable and its flux, even in the presence of discontinuous coefficients in the flux term. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 15: 267–283, 1999     

Discontinuous finite volume element method for parabolic problems

In this article, we consider the semidiscrete and the backward Euler fully discrete discontinuous finite volume element methods for the second‐order parabolic problems and obtain the optimal order error estimates in a mesh dependent norm and in the L²‐norm. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2010     

Weak Galerkin finite element methods for a fourth order parabolic equation

This paper is devoted to a newly developed weak Galerkin finite element method with the stabilization term for a linear fourth order parabolic equation, where weakly defined Laplacian operator over discontinuous functions is introduced. Priori estimates are developed and analyzed in L² and an H² type norm for both semi‐discrete and fully discrete schemes. And finally, numerical examples are provided to confirm the theoretical results.     

Adaptive stabilized mixed finite volume methods for the incompressible flow

In this article, we study adaptive stabilized mixed finite volume methods for the incompressible flows approximated using the lower order elements. A residual type of a posteriori error estimator is designed and studied with the derivation of upper and lower bounds between the exact solution and the finite volume solution. A discrete local lower bound between two successive finite volume solutions is also obtained. Also, convergence of the adaptive stabilized mixed finite volume methods is established. The presented methods have three prominent features. First, it is of practical convenience in real applications with the same partitions for velocity and pressure. Second, less computational time is required by easily applying both the lower order elements and the local grid refinement necessary for the elements of interest. Third, compared with the standard finite element method, its analysis of H¹‐norm and L²‐norm for the velocity and pressure are usually derived without any high order regularity conditions on the exact solution. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 31: 1424–1443, 2015     

Weak Galerkin finite element method for a class of time fractional generalized Burgers' equation

In this article, we use the weak Galerkin (WG) finite element method to study a class of time fractional generalized Burgers' equation. The existence of numerical solutions and the stability of fully discrete scheme are proved. Meanwhile, by applying the energy method, an optimal order error estimate in discrete L² norm is established. Numerical experiments are presented to validate the theoretical analysis.     

Convergence analysis of an approximation to miscible fluid flows in porous media by combining mixed finite element and finite volume methods

This article deals with development and analysis of a numerical method for a coupled system describing miscible displacement of one incompressible fluid by another through heterogeneous porous media. A mixed finite element (MFE) method is employed to discretize the Darcy flow equation combined with a conservative finite volume (FV) method on unstructured grids for the concentration equation. It is shown that the FV scheme satisfies a discrete maximum principle. We derive L^∞ and BV estimates under an appropriate CFL condition. Then we prove convergence of the approximate solutions to a weak solution of the coupled system. Numerical results are presented to see the performance of the method in two space dimensions. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2008     

A coupling of nonconforming and mixed finite element methods for Biot's consolidation model

In this article, we develop a nonconforming mixed finite element method to solve Biot's consolidation model. In particular, this work has been motivated to overcome nonphysical oscillations in the pressure variable, which is known as locking in poroelasticity. The method is based on a coupling of a nonconforming finite element method for the displacement of the solid phase with a standard mixed finite element method for the pressure and velocity of the fluid phase. The discrete Korn's inequality has been achieved by adding a jump term to the discrete variational formulation. We prove a rigorous proof of a‐priori error estimates for both semidiscrete and fully‐discrete schemes. Optimal error estimates have been derived. In particular, optimality in the pressure, measured in different norms, has been proved for both cases when the constrained specific storage coefficient c₀ is strictly positive and when c₀ is nonnegative. Numerical results illustrate the accuracy of the method and also show the effectiveness of the method to overcome the nonphysical pressure oscillations. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2013     

A weak Galerkin mixed finite element method for the Helmholtz equation with large wave numbers

In this article, a new weak Galerkin mixed finite element method is introduced and analyzed for the Helmholtz equation with large wave numbers. The stability and well‐posedness of the method are established for any wave number k without mesh size constraint. Allowing the use of discontinuous approximating functions makes weak Galerkin mixed method highly flexible in term of little restrictions on approximations and meshes. In the weak Galerkin mixed finite element formulation, approximation functions can be piecewise polynomials with different degrees on different elements and meshes can consist elements with different shapes. Suboptimal order error estimates in both discrete H¹ and L² norms are established for the weak Galerkin mixed finite element solutions. Numerical examples are tested to support the theory.     

Development and Analysis of Higher Order Finite Volume Methods over Rectangles for Elliptic Equations

Currently used finite volume methods are essentially low order methods. In this paper, we present a systematic way to derive higher order finite volume schemes from higher order mixed finite element methods. Mostly for convenience but sometimes from necessity, our procedure starts from the hybridization of the mixed method. It then approximates the inner product of vector functions by an appropriate, critical quadrature rule; this allows the elimination of the flux and Lagrange multiplier parameters so as to obtain equations in the scalar variable, which will define the finite volume method. Following this derivation with different mixed finite element spaces leads to a variety of finite volume schemes. In particular, we restrict ourselves to finite volume methods posed over rectangular partitions and begin by studying an efficient second-order finite volume method based on the Brezzi–Douglas–Fortin–Marini space of index two. Then, we present a general global analysis of the difference between the solution of the underlying mixed finite element method and its related finite volume method. Then, we derive finite volume methods of all orders from the Raviart–Thomas two-dimensional rectangular elements; we also find finite volume methods to associate with BDFM ₂ three-dimensional rectangles. In each case, we obtain optimal error estimates for both the scalar variable and the recovered flux.     

Lp error estimates and superconvergence for covolume or finite volume element methods

We consider convergence of the covolume or finite volume element solution to linear elliptic and parabolic problems. Error estimates and superconvergence results in the L^p norm, 2 ≤ p ≤ ∞, are derived. We also show second‐order convergence in the L^p norm between the covolume and the corresponding finite element solutions and between their gradients. The main tools used in this article are an extension of the “supercloseness” results in Chou and Li [Math Comp 69(229) (2000), 103–120] to the L^p based spaces, duality arguments, and the discrete Green's function method. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 19: 463–486, 2003     

Error estimates for a finite volume element method for parabolic equations in convex polygonal domains

We analyze the spatially semidiscrete piecewise linear finite volume element method for parabolic equations in a convex polygonal domain in the plane. Our approach is based on the properties of the standard finite element Ritz projection and also of the elliptic projection defined by the bilinear form associated with the variational formulation of the finite volume element method. Because the domain is polygonal, special attention has to be paid to the limited regularity of the exact solution. We give sufficient conditions in terms of data that yield optimal order error estimates in L₂ and H 1 . The convergence rate in the L_∞ norm is suboptimal, the same as in the corresponding finite element method, and almost optimal away from the corners. We also briefly consider the lumped mass modification and the backward Euler fully discrete method. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2004     

Convergence of finite element method for linear second‐order wave equations with discontinuous coefficients

A finite element method is proposed and analyzed for hyperbolic problems with discontinuous coefficients. The main emphasize is given on the convergence of such method. Due to low global regularity of the solutions, the error analysis of the standard finite element method is difficult to adopt for such problems. For a practical finite element discretization, optimal error estimates in L^∞(L²) and L^∞(H¹) norms are established for continuous time discretization. Further, a fully discrete scheme based on a symmetric difference approximation is considered, and optimal order convergence in L^∞(H¹) norm is established. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2013     

Finite element approximations with quadrature for second‐order hyperbolic equations

In this article, the effect of numerical quadrature on the finite element Galerkin approximations to the solution of hyperbolic equations has been studied. Both semidiscrete and fully discrete schemes are analyzed and optimal estimates are derived in the L^∞(H¹), L^∞(L²) norms, whereas quasi‐optimal estimate is derived in the L^∞(L^∞) norm using energy methods. The analysis in the present paper improves upon the earlier results of Baker and Dougalis [SIAM J Numer Anal 13 (1976), pp 577–598] under the minimum smoothness assumptions of Rauch [SIAM J Numer Anal 22 (1985), pp 245–249] for a purely second‐order hyperbolic equation with quadrature. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 18: 537–559, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/num.10022     

Finite element analysis and application for a nonlinear diffusion model in image denoising

The stability analysis and error estimates are presented for a nonlinear diffusion model, which appears in image denoising and solved by a fully discrete time Galerkin method with kth (k ≥ 1) order conforming finite element spaces. Numerical experiments are provided with denoising several grayscale noisy images by our Galerkin method on bilinear finite elements. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 18: 649–662, 2002; DOI 10.1002/num.10017     

A two-grid finite element method for the Allen-Cahn equation with the logarithmic potential

In this paper, we present a two-grid finite element method for the Allen-Cahn equation with the logarithmic potential. This method consists of two steps. In the first step, based on a fully implicit finite element method, the Allen-Cahn equation is solved on a coarse grid with mesh size H. In the second step, a linearized system whose nonlinear term is replaced by the value of the first step is solved on a fine grid with mesh size h. We give the energy stabilities of the traditional finite element method and the two-grid finite element method. The optimal convergence order of the two-grid finite element method in H¹ norm is achieved when the mesh sizes satisfy h = O(H²). Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed scheme. The results show that the two-grid method can save the CPU time while keeping the same convergence rate.     

Error estimates for mixed finite element approximations of the viscoelasticity wave equation

This paper studies mixed finite element approximations to the solution of the viscoelasticity wave equation. Two new transformations are introduced and a corresponding system of first‐order differential‐integral equations is derived. The semi‐discrete and full‐discrete mixed finite element methods are then proposed for the problem based on the Raviart–Thomas–Nedelec spaces. The optimal error estimates in L²‐norm are obtained for the semi‐discrete and full‐discrete mixed approximations of the general viscoelasticity wave equation. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.