An H1-Galerkin Space-Time Mixed Finite Element Method for Semilinear Convection–Diffusion–Reaction Equations

Abstract

In this paper, the semilinear convection–diffusion–reaction equation is split into a lower-order system by introducing the auxiliary variable q=a(x)ux. An H1-Galerkin space-time mixed finite element method for the lower-order system is then constructed. The proposed method applies the finite element method to discretize the time and space directions simultaneously and does not require checking the Ladyzhenskaya–Babusˇka–Brezzi (LBB) compatibility constraints, which differs from the traditional mixed finite element method. The uniqueness of the approximate solutions u and q are proven. The L2(L2) norm optimal order error estimates of the approximate solution u and q are derived by introducing the space-time projection operator. The numerical experiment is presented to verify the theoretical results. Furthermore, by comparing with the classical H1-Galerkin mixed finite element scheme, the proposed scheme can easily improve computational accuracy and time convergence order by changing the basis function.