Discontinuous Galerkin Spatial Discretization Research Articles

Nodal discontinuous Galerkin methods for Maxwell's equations in Lorentz-Kerr-Raman medium without nonlinear algebraic solver

The propagation of electromagnetic waves is modeled by time-dependent Maxwell's equations coupled with constitutive laws that describe the responses of the media. In this work, we consider a nonlinear model that describes the electromagnetic wave in an optical medium with the linear Lorentz effect and the cubic nonlinear instantaneous Kerr and delayed Raman effects. Mathematically this model obeys an energy conservative/dissipative law. Though there have been active efforts in designing numerical methods (e.g. of finite difference / finite element /discontinuous Galerkin type) to simulate this model, the methods proposed here are distinctive in that they are free of any nonlinear algebraic solvers. Moreover, in the absence of the Raman effect, our methods also enjoy a provable discrete energy law, and optimal a priori error estimates are further established when the exact solutions are sufficiently smooth. The key ingredients of the new methods include some novel treatment in time discretizations and nodal discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization for the specific nonlinearities, and they also render a local nature of the methods and hence their suitability for parallel implementation with great efficiency. Numerical experiments are performed to illustrate the accuracy, stability, computational efficiency and parallel scalability of the proposed methods. We further apply the methods to simulate some physically relevant problems in one, two, and three dimensions.

Energy-Dependent, Self-Adaptive Mesh h(p)-Refinement of an Interior-Penalty Scheme for a Discontinuous Galerkin Isogeometric Analysis Spatial Discretization of the Multi-Group Neutron Diffusion Equation with Dual-Weighted Residual Error Measures

Energy-dependent self-adaptive mesh refinement algorithms are developed for a symmetric interior-penalty scheme for a discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization of the multi-group neutron diffusion equation using NURBS-based isogeometric analysis (IGA). The spatially self-adaptive algorithms employ both mesh (h) and polynomial degree (p) refinement. The discretized system becomes increasingly ill-conditioned for increasingly large penalty parameters; and there is no gain in accuracy for over penalization. Therefore, optimized penalty parameters are rigorously calculated, for general element types, from a coercivity analysis of the bilinear form. Local mesh refinement allows for a better allocation of computational resources; and thus, more accuracy per degree of freedom. Two a posteriori interpolation-based error measures are proposed. The first heuristically minimizes local contributions to the discretization error, which becomes competitive for global quantities of interest (QoIs). However, for localized QoIs, over energy-dependent meshes, certain multi-group components may become under-resolved. The second employs duality arguments to minimize important error contributions, which consistently and reliably reduces the error in the QoI.

A discontinuous Galerkin finite element model for compound flood simulations

Many tropical cyclones, e.g., Hurricane Harvey (2017), have lead to significant rainfall and resulting runoff. When the runoff interacts with storm surge, the resulting floods can be greatly amplified and lead to effects that cannot be correctly modeled by simple superposition of its distinctive sources. In an effort to develop accurate numerical simulations of runoff, surge, and compounding floods, we develop a local discontinuous Galerkin method for modified shallow water equations. In this modification, nonzero sources to the continuity equation are included to incorporate rainfall into the model using parametric rainfall models from literature as well as hindcast data. The discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization is accompanied with a strong stability preserving explicit Runge Kutta time integrator. Hence, temporal stability is ensured through the Courant–Friedrichs–Lewy (CFL) condition and we exploit the embarrassingly parallel nature of the developed method using MPI parallelization.We demonstrate the capabilities of the developed method though a sequence of physically relevant numerical tests, including small scale test cases based on laboratory measurements and large scale experiments with Hurricane Harvey in the Gulf of Mexico. The results highlight the conservation properties and robustness of the developed method and show the potential of compound flood modeling using our approach.

A parallel p‐adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method for the Euler equations with dynamic load‐balancing on tetrahedral grids

AbstractA novel p‐adaptive discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method has been developed to solve the Euler equations on three‐dimensional tetrahedral grids. Hierarchical orthogonal basis functions are adopted for the DG spatial discretization while a third order TVD Runge‐Kutta method is used for the time integration. A vertex‐based limiter is applied to the numerical solution in order to eliminate oscillations in the high order method. An error indicator constructed from the solution of order and is used to adapt degrees of freedom in each computational element, which remarkably reduces the computational cost while still maintaining an accurate solution. The developed method is implemented with under the Charm++ parallel computing framework. Charm++ is a parallel computing framework that includes various load‐balancing strategies. Implementing the numerical solver under Charm++ system provides us with access to a suite of dynamic load balancing strategies. This can be efficiently used to alleviate the load imbalances created by p‐adaptation. A number of numerical experiments are performed to demonstrate both the numerical accuracy and parallel performance of the developed p‐adaptive DG method. It is observed that the unbalanced load distribution caused by the parallel p‐adaptive DG method can be alleviated by the dynamic load balancing from Charm++ system. Due to this, high performance gain can be achieved. For the testcases studied in the current work, the parallel performance gain ranged from 1.5× to 3.7×. Therefore, the developed p‐adaptive DG method can significantly reduce the total simulation time in comparison to the standard DG method without p‐adaptation.

Wall-distance free transition model based on the laminar kinetic energy

The next fluid dynamics solvers will be based on innovative numerical schemes and models to increase the fidelity and decrease the computational cost. The higher accuracy and geometrical flexibility guaranteed by discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization methods in solving Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes equations could represent an appealing solution in comparison with finite volume solvers for real-life simulations. In this context, numerical models able to accurately predict transitional flows are mandatory to overcome the limits of turbulence models and the costs of high-fidelity approaches, e.g., Direct Numerical Simulations and Large Eddy Simulations, for the efficient design of many industrial applications, e.g., aerospace, turbomachinery, maritime, automotive, and cooling applications. Among the transition models proposed in the literature, the local and phenomenological formulation seems to guarantee better robustness, fidelity, and easiness of implementation in all the solvers. All the transition models are based also on the wall-distance, to define some local terms or parameters and model the transition phenomenon. The calculation of the wall-distance can be critical in the discontinuous Galerkin framework for the high-order representation of the boundaries, which can become very expensive and high-memory consuming. To alleviate this problem, a wall-distance free version of a transition model based on the laminar kinetic energy is proposed and implemented in a high-order discontinuous Galerkin solver, and the robustness and fidelity are assessed by computing flows with bypass and separation-induced transition and different Reynolds number, turbulent intensity, and pressure gradient on flat plates. The wall-distance free formulation proves robustness and fidelity in all the cases, in comparison with the original formulation and an ad hoc modified formulation for the separation-induced transition cases.

An IMEX-DG solver for atmospheric dynamics simulations with adaptive mesh refinement

We present an accurate and efficient solver for atmospheric dynamics simulations that allows for non-conforming mesh refinement. The model equations are the conservative Euler equations for compressible flows. The numerical method is based on an h−adaptive Discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization and on a second order Additive Runge Kutta IMEX method for time discretization, especially designed for low Mach regimes. The solver is implemented in the framework of the deal.II library, whose mesh refinement capabilities are employed to enhance efficiency. A number of numerical experiments based on classical benchmarks for atmosphere dynamics demonstrate the properties and advantages of the proposed method.

Modeling 3-D Elastic Wave Propagation in TI Media Using Discontinuous Galerkin Method on Tetrahedral Meshes

Transversely isotropic (TI) medium is a widely studied anisotropic solid medium in seismology. The numerical simulation of seismic wave propagation in TI media is an effective tool to analyze the mechanism of seismic waves in complex anisotropic media. In this study, we introduce a double-weighted Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG) method for numerically solving wave propagation problems in 3D TI media with surface topography. This method incorporates the discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization with an explicit double-weighted two-step iteration time discretization. The local Lax-Friedrichs flux is used as the numerical flux in the formulations. This method can solve the first-order velocity-stress seismic wave equations including TI media as well as more general anisotropic media. Due to the large scale of 3D problems, the parallel technology is adopted. Regions with irregular boundaries are discretized into unstructured tetrahedral meshes. Numerical experiments for various anisotropic media including the vertical and tilted TI media are presented. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the double-weighted RKDG method in wavefield simulations in 3D complicated anisotropic media.

On the SAV‐DG method for a class of fourth order gradient flows

AbstractFor a class of fourth order gradient flow problems, integration of the scalar auxiliary variable (SAV) time discretization with the penalty‐free discontinuous Galerkin (DG) spatial discretization leads to SAV‐DG schemes. These schemes are linear and shown unconditionally energy stable. However, the reduced linear systems are rather expensive to solve due to the dense coefficient matrices. In this paper, we provide a procedure to pre‐evaluate the auxiliary variable in the piecewise polynomial space. As a result the computational complexity of reduces to when exploiting the conjugate gradient (CG) solver. This hybrid SAV‐DG method is more efficient and able to deliver satisfactory results of high accuracy. This was also compared with solving the full augmented system of the SAV‐DG schemes.

Stability and Error Estimates of a Novel Spectral Deferred Correction Time-Marching with Local Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Parabolic Equations

Abstract In this paper, we discuss the stability and error estimates of the fully discrete schemes for parabolic equations, in which local discontinuous Galerkin methods with generalized alternating numerical fluxes and a novel spectral deferred correction method based on second-order time integration methods are adopted. With the energy techniques, we obtain both the second- and fourth-order spectral deferred correction time-marching with local discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization are unconditional stable. The optimal error estimates for the corresponding fully discrete scheme are derived by the aid of the generalized Gauss–Radau projection. We extend the analysis to problems with higher even-order derivatives. Numerical examples are displayed to verify our theoretical results.

An efficient IMEX-DG solver for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations for non-ideal gases

We propose an efficient, accurate and robust IMEX solver for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations describing non-ideal gases with general cubic equation of state and Stiffened-Gas EOS. The method is based on an h-adaptive Discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization and on an Additive Runge Kutta IMEX method for time discretization. It is specifically tailored for low Mach number applications and allows to simulate low Mach regimes at a significantly reduced computational cost, while maintaining full second order accuracy also for higher Mach number regimes. The method has been implemented in the framework of the deal.II numerical library, whose adaptive mesh refinement capabilities are employed to enhance efficiency. Refinement indicators appropriate for real gas phenomena have been introduced. A number of numerical experiments on classical benchmarks for compressible flows and their extension to real gases demonstrate the properties of the proposed method.

Third order maximum-principle-satisfying and positivity-preserving Lax-Wendroff discontinuous Galerkin methods for hyperbolic conservation laws

There have been intensive studies on maximum-principle-satisfying and positivity-preserving methods for hyperbolic conservation laws. Most of them are based on the method of lines type time marching approaches, e.g. the Runge-Kutta methods, multi-step methods and backward Euler method. As an alternative, the Lax-Wendroff time marching approach utilizes the information of PDEs in the Taylor expansion of the solution in time, hence it is a high order and single-stage method. In this work, we propose third order maximum-principle-satisfying and positivity-preserving schemes for scalar conservation laws and the Euler equations based on the Lax-Wendroff time discretization and discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization. The accuracy and effectiveness of the maximum-principle-satisfying and positivity-preserving techniques are demonstrated by ample numerical tests.

High order semi-implicit schemes for viscous compressible flows in 3D

In this article we present a high order cell-centered numerical scheme in space and time for the solution of the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. To deal with multiscale phenomena induced by the different speeds of acoustic and material waves, we propose a semi-implicit time discretization which allows the CFL-stability condition to be independent of the fast sound speed, hence improving the efficiency of the solver. This is particularly well suited for applications in the low Mach regime with a rather small fluid velocity, where the governing equations tend to the incompressible model. The momentum equation is inserted into the energy equation yielding an elliptic equation on the pressure. The class of implicit-explicit (IMEX) time integrators is then used to ensure asymptotic preserving properties of the numerical method and to improve time accuracy. High order in space is achieved relying on implicit finite difference and explicit CWENO reconstruction operators, that ultimately lead to a fully quadrature-free scheme. To relax the severe parabolic restriction on the maximum admissible time step related to viscous contributions, a novel implicit discretization of the diffusive terms is designed. A variational approach based on the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) spatial discretization is devised in order to obtain a discrete cell-centered Laplace operator. High order corner gradients of the velocity field are employed in 3D to derive the Laplace discretization, and the resulting viscous system is proven to be symmetric and positive definite. As such, it can be conveniently solved at the aid of the conjugate gradient method. Numerical results confirm the accuracy and the robustness of the novel schemes in the challenging stiff limit of the governing equations characterized by low Mach numbers.

A High-Order Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Solving Preconditioned Euler Equations

A high-order discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method is presented for solving the preconditioned Euler equations with an explicit or implicit time marching scheme. A detailed description is given of a practical implementation of a precondition matrix of the type of Weiss and Smith and of the DG spatial discretization scheme employed, with particular emphasis on the artificial viscosity-based shock capturing techniques. The curved boundary treatment is proposed through adopting a NURBS surface equipped with a radial basis function interpolation to propagate the boundary displacement to the interior of the mesh. The resulting methods are verified by simulating flows over two-dimensional airfoils, such as symmetric NACA0012 or asymmetric RAE2822, and over three-dimensional bodies, such as an academic hemispherical headform or aerodynamic ONERA M6 wing. Numerical results show that the present method functions for both transonic and nearly incompressible flow simulations, and the proposed treatment of curved boundaries, play an important role in improving the accuracy of the obtained solutions, which are in good agreement with available experimental data or other numerical solutions reported in literature.

A scalable exponential-DG approach for nonlinear conservation laws: With application to Burger and Euler equations

We propose an Exponential DG approach for numerically solving partial differential equations (PDEs). The idea is to decompose the governing PDE operators into linear (fast dynamics extracted by linearization) and nonlinear (the remaining after removing the former) parts, on which we apply the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) spatial discretization. The resulting semi-discrete system is then integrated using exponential time-integrators: exact for the former and approximate for the latter. By construction, our approach i) is stable with a large Courant number (Cr>1); ii) supports high-order solutions both in time and space; iii) is computationally favorable compared to IMEX DG methods with no preconditioner; iv) requires comparable computational time compared to explicit RKDG methods, while having time stepsizes orders magnitude larger than maximal stable time stepsizes for explicit RKDG methods; v) is scalable in a modern massively parallel computing architecture by exploiting Krylov-subspace matrix-free exponential time integrators and compact communication stencil of DG methods. Various numerical results for both Burgers and Euler equations are presented to showcase these expected properties. For Burgers equation, we present a detailed stability and convergence analyses for the exponential Euler DG scheme.

High order sign-preserving and well-balanced exponential Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin methods for the shallow water equations with friction

In this paper, we propose a family of second and third order temporal integration methods for systems of stiff ordinary differential equations, and explore their application in solving the shallow water equations with friction. The new temporal discretization methods come from a combination of the traditional Runge-Kutta method (for non-stiff equation) and exponential Runge-Kutta method (for stiff equation), and are shown to have both the sign-preserving and steady-state-preserving properties. They are combined with the well-balanced discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization to solve the nonlinear shallow water equations with non-flat bottom topography and (stiff) friction terms. We have demonstrated that the fully discrete schemes satisfy the well-balanced, positivity-preserving and sign-preserving properties simultaneously. The proposed methods have been tested and validated on several one- and two-dimensional test cases, and good numerical results have been observed.

Complete Radiation Boundary Conditions for Maxwell’s Equations

We describe the construction, analysis, and implementation of arbitrary-order local radiation boundary condition sequences for Maxwell’s equations. In particular we use the complete radiation boundary conditions which implicitly apply uniformly accurate exponentially convergent rational approximants to the exact radiation boundary conditions. Numerical experiments for waveguide and free space problems using high- order discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretizations are presented.

Uniformly High-Order Structure-Preserving Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Euler Equations with Gravitation: Positivity and Well-Balancedness

This paper presents a class of novel high-order accurate discontinuous Galerkin (DG) schemes for the compressible Euler equations under gravitational fields. A notable feature of these schemes is that they are well-balanced for a general hydrostatic equilibrium state, and at the same time, provably preserve the positivity of density and pressure. In order to achieve the well-balanced and positivity-preserving properties simultaneously, a novel DG spatial discretization is carefully designed with suitable source term reformulation and a properly modified Harten-Lax-van Leer contact (HLLC) flux. Based on some technical decompositions as well as several key properties of the admissible states and HLLC flux, rigorous positivity-preserving analyses are carried out. It is proven that the resulting well-balanced DG schemes, coupled with strong stability preserving time discretizations, satisfy a weak positivity property, which implies that one can apply a simple existing limiter to effectively enforce the positivity-preserving property, without losing high-order accuracy and conservation. The proposed methods and analyses are applicable to the Euler system with general equation of state. Extensive one- and two-dimensional numerical tests demonstrate the desired properties of these schemes, including the exact preservation of the equilibrium state, the ability to capture small perturbation of such state, the robustness for solving problems involving low density and/or low pressure, and good resolution for smooth and discontinuous solutions.

Comparison of Semi-Lagrangian Discontinuous Galerkin Schemes for Linear and Nonlinear Transport Simulations

Transport problems arise across diverse fields of science and engineering. Semi-Lagrangian (SL) discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods are a class of high-order deterministic transport solvers that enjoy advantages of both the SL approach and the DG spatial discretization. In this paper, we review existing SLDG methods to date and compare numerically their performance. In particular, we make a comparison between the splitting and non-splitting SLDG methods for multi-dimensional transport simulations. Through extensive numerical results, we offer a practical guide for choosing optimal SLDG solvers for linear and nonlinear transport simulations.

Analysis of Recovery-assisted discontinuous Galerkin methods for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations

The discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method has been recognized as a promising approach for high-fidelity numerical simulations of turbulent flows (e.g., large-eddy simulation or direct numerical simulation), given its capability to achieve high-order accuracy in complex geometries while damping out spurious high-wavenumber oscillations in advection-dominated regimes. In this work, we analyze an advection-diffusion scheme arising from the strategic use of the Recovery concept to improve the performance of the basic DG spatial discretization on a nearest-neighbors stencil. Following the principle of Recovery, the underlying solution between two neighboring cells is reconstructed in an interface-centered fashion to compute the convective and diffusive fluxes with exceptional accuracy. While certain Recovery-based schemes are known to achieve exceedingly high convergence rates for diffusion (up to 3p+2 in the cell-average norm, where p is the degree of the polynomial basis), there are more constraining order of accuracy limitations for advection due to the direction of the wind. The key technical challenge we address is to develop an advection-diffusion scheme that is both stable and efficient while leveraging the high accuracy of the Recovery concept on a nearest-neighbors stencil. The usage of Recovery overcomes a fundamental deficiency in typical DG discretizations, namely that a conventional advection-diffusion scheme is reduced from order 2p+1 accuracy in the advection-dominated regime to order 2p accuracy in the diffusion-dominated regime, as demonstrated by Fourier analysis. Our new Recovery-assisted scheme is instead able to achieve order 2p+2 accuracy in both the advection-dominated and diffusion-dominated regimes on the nearest-neighbors stencil. By combining the Recovery operator with the mixed formulation, the proposed advection-diffusion scheme achieves improved accuracy compared to established mixed formulation approaches while circumventing the differentiation of the recovered solution, which is a liability in multi-dimensional geometries. Fourier analysis and a suite of linear and nonlinear test problems, including 3D compressible Navier-Stokes, are presented to examine the performance of the new Recovery-assisted scheme; the results show a considerable accuracy advantage compared to a conventional, state-of-the-art DG approach. Furthermore, to simplify the implementation, we show that the Recovery procedure can be recast as a set of derivative-based correction terms, which replicates the Recovery operator on structured meshes while avoiding the traditional complexities of the Recovery operation.

A Variable Eddington Factor method for the 1-D grey radiative transfer equations with discontinuous Galerkin and mixed finite-element spatial differencing

The purpose of this paper is to present a Variable Eddington Factor (VEF) method for the 1-D grey radiative transfer equations that uses a lumped linear discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization for the Snequations together with a constant-linear mixed finite-element discretization for the VEF moment and material temperature equations. The use of independent discretizations can be particularly useful for multiphysics applications such as radiation-hydrodynamics. The VEF method is quite old, but to our knowledge, this particular combination of differencing schemes has not been previously investigated for radiative transfer. We define the scheme and present computational results. As expected, the scheme exhibits second-order accuracy for the directionally-integrated intensity and material temperature, and behaves well in the thick diffusion limit. An important focus of this study is the treatment of the strong temperature dependence of the opacities and the spatial dependence of the opacities within each cell, which are not explicitly defined by the basic discretization schemes.