Nonlinearly stable flux reconstruction high-order methods in split form

Abstract

The flux reconstruction (FR) method has gained popularity in the research community as it recovers promising high-order methods through modally filtered correction fields, such as the discontinuous Galerkin method, amongst others, on unstructured grids over complex geometries. Moreover, FR schemes, specifically energy stable FR (ESFR) schemes also known as Vincent-Castonguay-Jameson-Huynh schemes, have proven attractive as they allow for design flexibility as well as stability proofs for the linear advection problem on affine elements. Additionally, split forms have recently seen a resurgence in research activity due to their resultant nonlinear (entropy) stability proofs. This paper derives for the first time nonlinearly stable ESFR schemes in split form that enable nonlinear stability proofs for, uncollocated, modal, ESFR split forms with different volume and surface cubature nodes. The critical enabling technology is applying the splitting to the discrete stiffness operator. This naturally leads to appropriate surface and numerical fluxes, enabling both entropy stability and conservation proofs. When these schemes are recast in strong form, they differ from schemes found in the ESFR literature as the ESFR correction functions are incorporated on the volume integral. Furthermore, numerical experiments are conducted for Burgers' equation verifying that the new class of proposed ESFR split forms is nonlinearly stable in contrast to the standard split form ESFR approach. Lastly, the new ESFR split form is shown to obtain the correct orders of accuracy.