A high-order discontinuous Galerkin method for unsteady advection–diffusion problems

Abstract

A high-order discontinuous Galerkin method with Lagrange multipliers is presented for the solution of unsteady advection–diffusion problems in the high Péclet number regime. It operates directly on the second-order form of the governing equation and does not require any stabilization. Its spatial basis functions are chosen among the free-space solutions of the homogeneous form of the partial differential equation obtained after time-discretization. It also features Lagrange multipliers for enforcing a weak continuity of the approximated solution across the element interface boundaries. This leads to a system of differential–algebraic equations which are time-integrated by an implicit family of schemes. The numerical stability of these schemes and the well-posedness of the overall discretization method are supported by a theoretical analysis. The performance of this method is demonstrated for various high Péclet number constant-coefficient model flow problems.