EXtended Hybridizable Discontinuous Galerkin (X-HDG) method for linear convection-diffusion equations on unfitted domains

Abstract

In this work, we propose a novel strategy for the numerical solution of linear convection diffusion equation (CDE) over unfitted domains. In the proposed numerical scheme, strategies from high order Hybridized Discontinuous Galerkin method and eXtended Finite Element method are combined with the level set definition of the boundaries. The proposed scheme and hence, is named as eXtended Hybridizable Discontinuous Galerkin (XHDG) method. In this regard, the Hybridizable Discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) method is eXtended to the unfitted domains; i.e., the computational mesh does not need to fit to the domain boundary; instead, the boundary is defined by a level set function and cuts through the background mesh arbitrarily. The original unknown structure of HDG and its hybrid nature ensuring the local conservation of fluxes is kept, while developing a modified bilinear form for the elements cut by the boundary. At every cut element, an auxiliary nodal trace variable on the boundary is introduced, which is eliminated afterwards while imposing the boundary conditions. Both stationary and time dependent CDEs are studied over a range of flow regimes from diffusion to convection dominated; using high order (p≤4) XHDG through benchmark numerical examples over arbitrary unfitted domains. Results proved that XHDG inherits optimal (p+1) and super (p+2) convergence properties of HDG while removing the fitting mesh restriction.