L2 error estimates for a family of cubic finite volume methods on triangular meshes

Abstract

This paper considers the error estimates of a family of Lagrange cubic finite volume methods for solving two dimensional elliptic boundary value problems over triangular meshes. By introducing a novel map of finite volume method, we propose a family of cubic finite volume method schemes with four independent map coefficients. It is detailedly proved that the proposed finite volume method schemes is exactly equivalent to the existing traditional finite volume method schemes of the same boundary value problems. A geometric constraint requirement on the triangular meshes of primary partitions is imposed to guarantee the uniform ellipticity of discrete elliptic bilinear forms resulted from the proposed schemes. The geometric requirements of the primary partitions could be greatly attenuated when the map coefficients are appropriately designed. Once the uniform ellipticity of the discrete elliptic bilinear forms is established, the proposed schemes have the unique solvability, and the optimal H1-norm error estimates without any restriction on dual elements of dual partitions of the finite volume methods, which is consistent with the results of literatures. With the help of the introduced map, the proposed schemes have the optimal L2-norm error estimates with a mesh restriction for the dual elements of their dual partitions significantly weaker than the existing theoretical results, in which the Aubin-Nitsche duality argument and the orthogonal conditions based on the dual partitions are employed. Finally, we validate our theoretical results by numerical experiments.