A cell functional minimization scheme for parabolic problem

Abstract

We are interested in a robust and accurate finite volume scheme for 2-D parabolic problems derived from the cell functional minimization approach. The scheme has a local stencil, is locally conservative, treats discontinuity rigorously and leads to a symmetric positive definite linear system. Since the scheme has both cell centered unknowns and cell edge unknowns, the computational cost is an issue and a parallel algorithm is then suggested based on nonoverlapping domain decomposition approach. The interface condition is of the Dirichlet–Robin type and has a parameter λ. By choosing this parameter properly, the convergence of the iteration process could be sped up. Numerical results for linear and nonlinear problems demonstrate the good performance of the cell functional minimization scheme and its parallel version on distorted meshes.