High-order Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin methods with a new type of multi-resolution WENO limiters

Abstract

In this paper, a new type of multi-resolution weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) limiters for high-order Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG) methods is designed. This type of multi-resolution WENO limiters is an extension of the multi-resolution WENO finite volume and finite difference schemes developed in [43]. Such new limiters use information of the DG solution essentially only within the troubled cell itself, to build a sequence of hierarchical L2 projection polynomials from zeroth degree to the highest degree of the RKDG method. The second-order, third-order, fourth-order, and fifth-order RKDG methods with these multi-resolution WENO limiters have been developed as examples, which could maintain the original order of accuracy in smooth regions and could simultaneously suppress spurious oscillations near strong discontinuities. The linear weights of such new multi-resolution WENO limiters can be any positive numbers on the condition that their sum equals one. This is the first time that a series of polynomials of different degrees within the troubled cell itself are applied in a WENO fashion to modify the DG solutions in the troubled cell. These new WENO limiters are very simple to construct, and can be easily implemented to arbitrary high-order accuracy and in higher dimensions. Such spatial reconstruction methodology improves the robustness in the numerical simulation on the same compact spatial stencil of the original DG methods. Benchmark examples are given to demonstrate the good performance of these RKDG methods with the associated multi-resolution WENO limiters.