Superconvergence of the semi-discrete local discontinuous Galerkin method for nonlinear KdV-type problems

Abstract

In this paper, we present and analyze a superconvergent local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) scheme for the numerical solution of nonlinear KdV-type partial differential equations. Optimal a priori error estimates for the LDG solution and for the two auxiliary variables that approximate the first-and second-order derivative are derived in the L2-norm for the semi-discrete formulation. The order of convergence is proved to be p+1, when piecewise polynomials of degree at most p are used. We further prove that the derivative of the LDG solution is superconvergent with order p+1 towards the derivative of a special projection of the exact solution. We use this results to prove that the LDG solution is superconvergent with order p+3/2 toward a special Gauss-Radau projection of the exact solution. Finally, several numerical examples are given to validate the theoretical results. Our proofs are valid for arbitrary regular meshes using Pp polynomials with p≥1 and under the condition that |f'(u)| possesses a uniform positive lower bound, where f(u) is the nonlinear flux function. Our experiments demonstrate that our results hold true for KdV equations with general flux functions.