A Hybrid Staggered Discontinuous Galerkin Method for KdV Equations

Abstract

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.