Coupling of Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element and Boundary Element Methods

Abstract

This paper presents three new coupling methods for interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods and boundary element methods. The new methods allow one to use discontinuous basis functions on the interface between the subdomains represented by the finite element and boundary element methods. This feature is particularly important when discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods are used. Error and stability analysis is presented for one of the methods. Numerical examples suggest that all three methods exhibit very similar convergence properties, consistent with available theoretical results.