Solving Diffusion Problems on Rough Surfaces with a Hierarchical Multiscale FEM

Diffusion on rough surfaces is a basic problem for many applications in engineering and the sciences. Solving these problems with a standard finite element method is often difficult or even impossible, due to the computational work and the amount of memory needed to triangulate the whole surface with a mesh which resolves its oscillations. We discuss in this paper a hierarchical Finite Element Method of “heterogeneous multiscale” type, which only needs to resolve the surface's fine scale on small sampling domains within a macro triangulation of the underlying smooth surface. This method converges, for periodic surface roughness and sufficiently small amplitude, at a robust (i.e. scale independent) rate, to the homogenized solution. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)