A Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Three-Dimensional Shallow Water Equations

We describe the application of a local discontinuous Galerkin method to the numerical solution of the three-dimensional shallow water equations. The shallow water equations are used to model surface water flows where the hydrostatic pressure assumption is valid. The authors recently developed a DG\linebreak method for the depth-integrated shallow water equations. The method described here is an extension of these ideas to non-depth-integrated models. The method and its implementation are discussed, followed by numerical examples on several test problems.This revised version was published online in July 2005 with corrected volume and issue numbers.     

A Hybrid Staggered Discontinuous Galerkin Method for KdV Equations

A hybrid staggered discontinuous Galerkin method is developed for the Korteweg–de Vries equation. The equation is written into a system of first order equations by introducing auxiliary variables. Two sets of finite element functions are introduced to approximate the solution and the auxiliary variables. The staggered continuity of the two finite element function spaces gives a natural flux condition and trace value on the element boundaries in the derivation of Galerkin approximation. On the other hand, to deal with the third order derivative term an hybridization idea is used and additional flux unknowns are introduced. The auxiliary variables can be eliminated in each element and the resulting algebraic system on the solution and the additional flux unknowns is solved. Stability of the semi discrete form is proven for various boundary conditions. Numerical results present the optimal order of \(L^2\)-errors of the proposed method for a given polynomial order.     

An Analysis of the Minimal Dissipation Local Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Convection–Diffusion Problems

We analyze the so-called the minimal dissipation local discontinuous Galerkin method (MD-LDG) for convection–diffusion or diffusion problems. The distinctive feature of this method is that the stabilization parameters associated with the numerical trace of the flux are identically equal to zero in the interior of the domain; this is why its dissipation is said to be minimal. We show that the orders of convergence of the approximations for the potential and the flux using polynomials of degree k are the same as those of all known discontinuous Galerkin methods, namely, (k + 1) and k, respectively. Our numerical results verify that these orders of convergence are sharp. The novelty of the analysis is that it bypasses a seemingly indispensable condition, namely, the positivity of the above mentioned stabilization parameters, by using a new, carefully defined projection tailored to the very definition of the numerical traces.     

Fourier Type Error Analysis of the Direct Discontinuous Galerkin Method and Its Variations for Diffusion Equations

In this paper we present Fourier type error analysis on the recent four discontinuous Galerkin methods for diffusion equations, namely the direct discontinuous Galerkin (DDG) method (Liu and Yan in SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 47(1):475?C698, 2009); the DDG method with interface corrections (Liu and Yan in Commun. Comput. Phys. 8(3):541?C564, 2010); and the DDG method with symmetric structure (Vidden and Yan in SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 2011); and a DG method with nonsymmetric structure (Yan, A discontinuous Galerkin method for nonlinear diffusion problems with nonsymmetric structure, 2011). The Fourier type L ² error analysis demonstrates the optimal convergence of the four DG methods with suitable numerical fluxes. The theoretical predicted errors agree well with the numerical results.     

Well-Balanced Nodal Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Euler Equations with Gravity

We present a well-balanced nodal discontinuous Galerkin (DG) scheme for compressible Euler equations with gravity. The DG scheme makes use of discontinuous Lagrange basis functions supported at Gauss–Lobatto–Legendre (GLL) nodes together with GLL quadrature using the same nodes. The well-balanced property is achieved by a specific form of source term discretization that depends on the nature of the hydrostatic solution, together with the GLL nodes for quadrature of the source term. The scheme is able to preserve isothermal and polytropic stationary solutions upto machine precision on any mesh composed of quadrilateral cells and for any gravitational potential. It is applied on several examples to demonstrate its well-balanced property and the improved resolution of small perturbations around the stationary solution.     

Local-Structure-Preserving Discontinuous Galerkin Methods with Lax-Wendroff Type Time Discretizations for Hamilton-Jacobi Equations

In this paper, a family of high order numerical methods are designed to solve the Hamilton-Jacobi equation for the viscosity solution. In particular, the methods start with a hyperbolic conservation law system closely related to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. The compact one-step one-stage Lax-Wendroff type time discretization is then applied together with the local-structure-preserving discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization. The resulting methods have lower computational complexity and memory usage on both structured and unstructured meshes compared with some standard numerical methods, while they are capable of capturing the viscosity solutions of Hamilton-Jacobi equations accurately and reliably. A collection of numerical experiments is presented to illustrate the performance of the methods.     

A Positivity-Preserving Well-Balanced Central Discontinuous Galerkin Method for the Nonlinear Shallow Water Equations

In this paper, we consider the development of central discontinuous Galerkin methods for solving the nonlinear shallow water equations over variable bottom topography in one and two dimensions. A reliable numerical scheme for these equations should preserve still-water stationary solutions and maintain the non-negativity of the water depth. We propose a high-order technique which exactly balances the flux gradients and source terms in the still-water stationary case by adding correction terms to the base scheme, meanwhile ensures the non-negativity of the water depth by using special approximations to the bottom together with a positivity-preserving limiter. Numerical tests are presented to illustrate the accuracy and validity of the proposed schemes.     

An hp-Analysis of the Local Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Diffusion Problems

We present an hp-error analysis of the local discontinuous Galerkin method for diffusion problems, considering unstructured meshes with hanging nodes and two- and three-dimensional domains. Our estimates are optimal in the meshsize h and slightly suboptimal in the polynomial approximation order p. Optimality in p is achieved for matching grids and polynomial boundary conditions.     

Local Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Surface Diffusion and Willmore Flow of Graphs

In this paper, we develop a local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) finite element method for surface diffusion and Willmore flow of graphs. We prove L ² stability for the equation of surface diffusion of graphs and energy stability for the equation of Willmore flow of graphs. We provide numerical simulation results for different types of solutions of these two types of the equations to illustrate the accuracy and capability of the LDG method.     

Spatial and Modal Superconvergence of the Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Linear Equations

We apply the discontinuous Galerkin finite element method with a degree p polynomial basis to the linear advection equation and derive a PDE which the numerical solution solves exactly. We use a Fourier approach to derive polynomial solutions to this PDE and show that the polynomials are closely related to the \(\frac{p}{p+1}\) Padé approximant of the exponential function. We show that for a uniform mesh of N elements there exist \((p+1)N\) independent polynomial solutions, N of which can be viewed as physical and pN as non-physical. We show that the accumulation error of the physical mode is of order \(2p+1\). In contrast, the non-physical modes are damped out exponentially quickly. We use these results to present a simple proof of the superconvergence of the DG method on uniform grids as well as show a connection between spatial superconvergence and the superaccuracies in dissipation and dispersion errors of the scheme. Finally, we show that for a class of initial projections on a uniform mesh, the superconvergent points of the numerical error tend exponentially quickly towards the downwind based Radau points.     

Direct Discontinuous Galerkin Method and Its Variations for Second Order Elliptic Equations

In this paper, we study direct discontinuous Galerkin method (Liu and Yan in SIAM J Numer Anal 47(1):475–698, 2009) and its variations (Liu and Yan in Commun Comput Phys 8(3):541–564, 2010; Vidden and Yan in J Comput Math 31(6):638–662, 2013; Yan in J Sci Comput 54(2–3):663–683, 2013) for 2nd order elliptic problems. A priori error estimate under energy norm is established for all four methods. Optimal error estimate under \(L^2\) norm is obtained for DDG method with interface correction (Liu and Yan in Commun Comput Phys 8(3):541–564, 2010) and symmetric DDG method (Vidden and Yan in J Comput Math 31(6):638–662, 2013). A series of numerical examples are carried out to illustrate the accuracy and capability of the schemes. Numerically we obtain optimal \((k+1)\)th order convergence for DDG method with interface correction and symmetric DDG method on nonuniform and unstructured triangular meshes. An interface problem with discontinuous diffusion coefficients is investigated and optimal \((k+1)\)th order accuracy is obtained. Peak solutions with sharp transitions are captured well. Highly oscillatory wave solutions of Helmholz equation are well resolved.     

Locally Divergence-Free Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for MHD Equations

In this paper, we continue our investigation of the locally divergence-free discontinuous Galerkin method, originally developed for the linear Maxwell equations (J. Comput. Phys. 194 588–610 (2004)), to solve the nonlinear ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) equations. The distinctive feature of such method is the use of approximate solutions that are exactly divergence-free inside each element for the magnetic field. As a consequence, this method has a smaller computational cost than the traditional discontinuous Galerkin method with standard piecewise polynomial spaces. We formulate the locally divergence-free discontinuous Galerkin method for the MHD equations and perform extensive one and two-dimensional numerical experiments for both smooth solutions and solutions with discontinuities. Our computational results demonstrate that the locally divergence-free discontinuous Galerkin method, with a reduced cost comparing to the traditional discontinuous Galerkin method, can maintain the same accuracy for smooth solutions and can enhance the numerical stability of the scheme and reduce certain nonphysical features in some of the test cases.This revised version was published online in July 2005 with corrected volume and issue numbers.     

Discontinuous Galerkin Method with Staggered Hybridization for a Class of Nonlinear Stokes Equations

In this paper, we present a discontinuous Galerkin method with staggered hybridization to discretize a class of nonlinear Stokes equations in two dimensions. The utilization of staggered hybridization is new and this approach combines the features of traditional hybridization method and staggered discontinuous Galerkin method. The main idea of our method is to use hybrid variables to impose the staggered continuity conditions instead of enforcing them in the approximation space. Therefore, our method enjoys some distinctive advantages, including mass conservation, optimal convergence and preservation of symmetry of the stress tensor. We will also show that, one can obtain superconvergent and strongly divergence-free velocity by applying a local postprocessing technique on the approximate solution. We will analyze the stability and derive a priori error estimates of the proposed scheme. The resulting nonlinear system is solved by using the Newton’s method, and some numerical results will be demonstrated to confirm the theoretical rates of convergence and superconvergence.     

A Generic Stabilization Approach for Higher Order Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Convection Dominated Problems

In this paper we present a stabilized Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for hyperbolic and convection dominated problems. The presented scheme can be used in several space dimension and with a wide range of grid types. The stabilization method preserves the locality of the DG method and therefore allows to apply the same parallelization techniques used for the underlying DG method. As an example problem we consider the Euler equations of gas dynamics for an ideal gas. We demonstrate the stability and accuracy of our method through the detailed study of several test cases in two space dimension on both unstructured and cartesian grids. We show that our stabilization approach preserves the advantages of the DG method in regions where stabilization is not necessary. Furthermore, we give an outlook to adaptive and parallel calculations in 3d.     

Arbitrary High-Order Discontinuous Galerkin Schemes for the Magnetohydrodynamic Equations

In this paper, we propose a discontinuous Galerkin scheme with arbitrary order of accuracy in space and time for the magnetohydrodynamic equations. It is based on the Arbitrary order using DERivatives (ADER) methodology: the high order time approximation is obtained by a Taylor expansion in time. In this expansion all the time derivatives are replaced by space derivatives via the Cauchy-Kovalevskaya procedure. We propose an efficient algorithm of the Cauchy-Kovalevskaya procedure in the case of the three-dimensional magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) equations. Parallel to the time derivatives of the conservative variables the time derivatives of the fluxes are calculated. This enables the analytic time integration of the volume integral as well as that of the surface integral of the fluxes through the grid cell interfaces which occur in the discrete equations. At the cell interfaces the fluxes and all their derivatives may jump. Following the finite volume ADER approach the break up of all these jumps into the different waves are taken into account to get proper values of the fluxes at the grid cell interfaces. The approach under considerations is directly based on the expansion of the flux in time in which the leading order term may be any numerical flux calculation for the MHD-equation. Numerical convergence results for these equations up to 7th order of accuracy in space and time are shown.     

Globally Divergence-Free Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Ideal Magnetohydrodynamic Equations

Ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations are widely used in many areas in physics and engineering, and these equations have a divergence-free constraint on the magnetic field. In this paper, we propose high order globally divergence-free numerical methods to solve the ideal MHD equations. The algorithms are based on discontinuous Galerkin methods in space. The induction equation is discretized separately to approximate the normal components of the magnetic field on elements interfaces, and to extract additional information about the magnetic field when higher order accuracy is desired. This is then followed by an element by element reconstruction to obtain the globally divergence-free magnetic field. In time, strong-stability-preserving Runge–Kutta methods are applied. In consideration of accuracy and stability of the methods, a careful investigation is carried out, both numerically and analytically, to study the choices of the numerical fluxes associated with the electric field at element interfaces and vertices. The resulting methods are local and the approximated magnetic fields are globally divergence-free. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and robustness of the methods.     

A Discontinuous Galerkin Method for the Subjective Surfaces Problem

The work formulates and evaluates the local discontinuous Galerkin method for the subjective surfaces problem based on the curvature driven level set equation. A new mixed formulation simplifying the treatment of nonlinearities is proposed. The numerical algorithm is evaluated using several artificial and realistic test cases.     

Interior Penalty Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Maxwell’s Equations in Cold Plasma

In this paper, we develop an interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for the time-dependent Maxwell’s equations in cold plasma. Both semi and fully discrete DG schemes are constructed, and optimal error estimates in the energy norm are proved. To our best knowledge, this is the first error analysis carried out for the DG method for Maxwell’s equations in dispersive media.