A posteriori sub-cell finite volume limiting of staggered semi-implicit discontinuous Galerkin schemes for the shallow water equations

Abstract

We propose a novel family of a posteriori sub-cell finite volume limiters for spatially high order accurate semi-implicit discontinuous Galerkin (DG) schemes on staggered Cartesian grids for the solution of the shallow water equations expressed in conservative form in one and two space dimensions.We start from the unlimited arbitrary high order accurate staggered semi-implicit DG scheme proposed by Dumbser and Casulli (2013). In this method, the continuity equation and the momentum equations are integrated using a discontinuous finite element strategy on staggered control volumes, where the discrete free surface elevation is defined on the main grid and the discrete momentum is defined on edge-based staggered dual control volumes. In the semi-implicit approach, pressure terms are discretized implicitly, while the nonlinear convective terms are discretized explicitly. Inserting the momentum equations into the discrete continuity equation leads to a well conditioned block penta-diagonal linear system for the free surface elevation which can be efficiently solved with modern iterative methods. However, according to Godunov's theorem, any unlimited high order scheme inevitably produces spurious oscillations in the vicinity of discontinuities and strong gradients.In the present paper, we therefore propose to extend the successful family of a posteriori subcell finite volume limiters recently introduced by Dumbser et al. (2014) for explicit DG schemes also to semi-implicit time discretizations. At time tn the unlimited DG scheme is run in order to produce a so-called candidate solution for time tn+1. Then, the cells characterized by a non-admissible candidate solution are found by using physical and numerical detection criteria based on the positivity of the solution, the absence of floating point errors and the use of a relaxed discrete maximum principle (DMP) according to the MOOD strategy of Clain, Loubère and Diot (2013). In all the cells that are flagged as troubled control volumes a more robust semi-implicit finite volume (FV) method is then applied on a sub-grid composed of 2P+1 cells, where P denotes the polynomial degree used for approximating the discrete solution within the DG scheme. Then, after having identified the troubled cells, the linear system for the new free surface elevation is assembled and solved again, where unlimited cells use the high order semi-implicit DG scheme and limited cells are evolved via the more robust finite volume method. Finally, from the subcell finite volume averages a higher order DG polynomial is reconstructed and the scheme proceeds with the next time step.We apply the new semi-implicit staggered DG method with a posteriori subcell FV limiter to classical benchmarks such as Riemann problems in 1D and circular dam-break problems in 2D with shock waves, showing that the new subcell finite volume limiter is able to resolve shocks accurately without producing spurious oscillations. Moreover, if the solution is smooth, the detector does not find any troubled cells, as expected; consequently, the limiter is not activated and the method corresponds to the unlimited staggered semi-implicit DG scheme. In addition, we carry out numerical tests which show that the new scheme is well-balanced and able to deal with wet and dry fronts.