A constrained transport divergence-free finite element method for incompressible MHD equations

Abstract

In this paper we study finite element method for three-dimensional incompressible resistive magnetohydrodynamic equations, in which the velocity, the current density, and the magnetic induction are divergence-free. It is desirable that the discrete solutions should also satisfy divergence-free conditions exactly especially for the momentum equations. Inspired by constrained transport method, we devise a new stable mixed finite element method that can achieve the goal. We also prove the well-posedness of the discrete solutions. To solve the resulting linear algebraic equations, we propose a GMRES solver with an augmented Lagrangian block preconditioner. By numerical experiments, we verify the theoretical results and demonstrate the quasi-optimality of the discrete solver with respect to the number of degrees of freedom. A comparison with other discretization using lid driven cavity is also given.