In the wake of the computer revolution, a large number of apparently uncon nected computational techniques have emerged. Also, particular methods have assumed prominent positions in certain areas of application. Finite element methods, for example, are used almost exclusively for solving structural problems; spectral methods are becoming the preferred approach to global atmospheric modelling and weather prediction; and the use of finite difference methods is nearly universal in predicting the flow around aircraft wings and fuselages. These apparently unrelated techniques are firmly entrenched in computer codes used every day by practicing scientists and engineers. Many of these scientists and engineers have been drawn into the computational area without the benefit offormal computational training. Often the formal computational training we do provide reinforces the arbitrary divisions between the various computational methods available. One of the purposes of this monograph is to show that many computational techniques are, indeed, closely related. The Galerkin formulation, which is being used in many subject areas, provides the connection. Within the Galerkin frame-work we can generate finite element, finite difference, and spectral methods.

A class of finite element methods, the Discontinuous Galerkin Methods (DGM), has been under rapid development recently and has found its use very quickly in such diverse applications as aeroacoustics, semi-conductor device simula tion, turbomachinery, turbulent flows, materials processing, MHD and plasma simulations, and image processing. While there has been a lot of interest from mathematicians, physicists and engineers in DGM, only scattered information is available and there has been no prior effort in organizing and publishing the existing volume of knowledge on this subject. In May 24-26, 1999 we organized in Newport (Rhode Island, USA), the first international symposium on DGM with equal emphasis on the theory, numerical implementation, and applications. Eighteen invited speakers, lead ers in the field, and thirty-two contributors presented various aspects and addressed open issues on DGM. In this volume we include forty-nine papers presented in the Symposium as well as a survey paper written by the organiz ers. All papers were peer-reviewed. A summary of these papers is included in the survey paper, which also provides a historical perspective of the evolution of DGM and its relation to other numerical methods. We hope this volume will become a major reference in this topic. It is intended for students and researchers who work in theory and application of numerical solution of convection dominated partial differential equations. The papers were written with the assumption that the reader has some knowledge of classical finite elements and finite volume methods.

My purpose in this monograph is to present an essentially self-contained account of the mathematical theory of Galerkin finite element methods as applied to parabolic partial differential equations. The emphases and selection of topics reflects my own involvement in the field over the past 25 years, and my ambition has been to stress ideas and methods of analysis rather than to describe the most general and farreaching results possible. Since the formulation and analysis of Galerkin finite element methods for parabolic problems are generally based on ideas and results from the corresponding theory for stationary elliptic problems, such material is often included in the presentation. The basis of this work is my earlier text entitled Galerkin Finite Element Methods for Parabolic Problems, Springer Lecture Notes in Mathematics, No. 1054, from 1984. This has been out of print for several years, and I have felt a need and been encouraged by colleagues and friends to publish an updated version. In doing so I have included most of the contents of the 14 chapters of the earlier work in an updated and revised form, and added four new chapters, on semigroup methods, on multistep schemes, on incomplete iterative solution of the linear algebraic systems at the time levels, and on semilinear equations. The old chapters on fully discrete methods have been reworked by first treating the time discretization of an abstract differential equation in a Hilbert space setting, and the chapter on the discontinuous Galerkin method has been completely rewritten.

Focuses on three primal DG methods, covering both theory and computation, and providing the basic tools for analysis.

The subject of the book is the mathematical theory of the discontinuous Galerkin method (DGM), which is a relatively new technique for the numerical solution of partial differential equations. The book is concerned with the DGM developed for elliptic and parabolic equations and its applications to the numerical simulation of compressible flow. It deals with the theoretical as well as practical aspects of the DGM and treats the basic concepts and ideas of the DGM, as well as the latest significant findings and achievements in this area. The main benefit for readers and the book’s uniqueness lie in the fact that it is sufficiently detailed, extensive and mathematically precise, while at the same time providing a comprehensible guide through a wide spectrum of discontinuous Galerkin techniques and a survey of the latest efficient, accurate and robust discontinuous Galerkin schemes for the solution of compressible flow.

Over the last few decades discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods (DGFEMs) have been witnessed tremendous interest as a computational framework for the numerical solution of partial differential equations. Their success is due to their extreme versatility in the design of the underlying meshes and local basis functions, while retaining key features of both (classical) finite element and finite volume methods. Somewhat surprisingly, DGFEMs on general tessellations consisting of polygonal (in 2D) or polyhedral (in 3D) element shapes have received little attention within the literature, despite the potential computational advantages. This volume introduces the basic principles of hp-version (i.e., locally varying mesh-size and polynomial order) DGFEMs over meshes consisting of polygonal or polyhedral element shapes, presents their error analysis, and includes an extensive collection of numerical experiments. The extreme flexibility provided by the locally variable elemen t-shapes, element-sizes, and element-orders is shown to deliver substantial computational gains in several practical scenarios.

This book offers an introduction to the key ideas, basic analysis, and efficient implementation of discontinuous Galerkin finite element methods (DG-FEM) for the solution of partial differential equations. It covers all key theoretical results, including an overview of relevant results from approximation theory, convergence theory for numerical PDE’s, and orthogonal polynomials. Through embedded Matlab codes, coverage discusses and implements the algorithms for a number of classic systems of PDE’s: Maxwell’s equations, Euler equations, incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, and Poisson- and Helmholtz equations.

This monograph presents numerical methods for solving transient wave equations (i.e. in time domain). More precisely, it provides an overview of continuous and discontinuous finite element methods for these equations, including their implementation in physical models, an extensive description of 2D and 3D elements with different shapes, such as prisms or pyramids, an analysis of the accuracy of the methods and the study of the Maxwell’s system and the important problem of its spurious free approximations. After recalling the classical models, i.e. acoustics, linear elastodynamics and electromagnetism and their variational formulations, the authors present a wide variety of finite elements of different shapes useful for the numerical resolution of wave equations. Then, they focus on the construction of efficient continuous and discontinuous Galerkin methods and study their accuracy by plane wave techniques and a priori error estimates. A chapter is devoted to the Maxwell’s system and the important problem of its spurious-free approximations. Treatment of unbounded domains by Absorbing Boundary Conditions (ABC) and Perfectly Matched Layers (PML) is described and analyzed in a separate chapter. The two last chapters deal with time approximation including local time-stepping and with the study of some complex models, i.e. acoustics in flow, gravity waves and vibrating thin plates. Throughout, emphasis is put on the accuracy and computational efficiency of the methods, with attention brought to their practical aspects.This monograph also covers in details the theoretical foundations and numerical analysis of these methods. As a result, this monograph will be of interest to practitioners, researchers, engineers and graduate students involved in the numerical simulationof waves.

This book introduces the basic ideas to build discontinuous Galerkin methods and, at the same time, incorporates several recent mathematical developments. The presentation is to a large extent self-contained and is intended for graduate students and researchers in numerical analysis. The material covers a wide range of model problems, both steady and unsteady, elaborating from advection-reaction and diffusion problems up to the Navier-Stokes equations and Friedrichs' systems. Both finite element and finite volume viewpoints are exploited to convey the main ideas underlying the design of the approximation. The analysis is presented in a rigorous mathematical setting where discrete counterparts of the key properties of the continuous problem are identified. The framework encompasses fairly general meshes regarding element shapes and hanging nodes. Salient implementation issues are also addressed.

Written by two well-respected experts in the field, The Finite Element Method for Boundary Value Problems: Mathematics and Computations bridges the gap between applied mathematics and application-oriented computational studies using FEM. Mathematically rigorous, the FEM is presented as a method of approximation for differential operators that are mathematically classified as self-adjoint, non-self-adjoint, and non-linear, thus addressing totality of all BVPs in various areas of engineering, applied mathematics, and physical sciences. These classes of operators are utilized in various methods of approximation: Galerkin method, Petrov-Galerkin Method, weighted residual method, Galerkin method with weak form, least squares method based on residual functional, etc. to establish unconditionally stable finite element computational processes using calculus of variations. Readers are able to grasp the mathematical foundation of finite element method as well as its versatility of applications. h-, p-, and k-versions of finite element method, hierarchical approximations, convergence, error estimation, error computation, and adaptivity are additional significant aspects of this book.