In this paper we present two versions of the central local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method on overlapping cells for solving diffusion equations, and provide their stability analysis and error estimates for the linear heat equation. A comparison between the traditional LDG method on a single mesh and the two versions of the central LDG method on overlapping cells is also made. Numerical experiments are provided to validate the quantitative conclusions from the analysis and to support conclusions for general polynomial degrees.

This paper deals with the mathematical and numerical analysis of a simplified two-dimensional model for the interaction between the wind and a sail. The wind is modeled as a steady irrotational plane flow past the sail, satisfying the Kutta-Joukowski condition. This condition guarantees that the flow is not singular at the trailing edge of the sail. Although for the present analysis the position of the sail is taken as data, the final aim of this research is to develop tools to compute the sail shape under the aerodynamic pressure exerted by the wind. This is the reason why we propose a fictitious domain formulation of the problem, involving the wind velocity stream function and a Lagrange multiplier; the latter allows computing the force density exerted by the wind on the sail. The Kutta-Joukowski condition is imposed in integral form as an additional constraint. The resulting problem is proved to be well posed under mild assumptions. For the numerical solution, we propose a finite element method based on piecewise linear continuous elements to approximate the stream function and piecewise constant ones for the Lagrange multiplier. Error estimates are proved for both quantities and a couple of numerical tests confirming the theoretical results are reported. Finally the method is used to determine the sail shape under the action of the wind.

We present a convergence analysis of a cell-based finite volume (FV) discretization scheme applied to a problem of control in the coefficients of a generalized Laplace equation modelling, for example, a steady state heat conduction. Such problems arise in applications dealing with geometric optimal design, in particular shape and topology optimization, and are most often solved numerically utilizing a finite element approach. Within the FV framework for control in the coefficients problems the main difficulty we face is the need to analyze the convergence of fluxes defined on the faces of cells, whereas the convergence of the coefficients happens only with respect to the “volumetric” Lebesgue measure. Additionally, depending on whether the stationarity conditions are stated for the discretized or the original continuous problem, two distinct concepts of stationarity at a discrete level arise. We provide characterizations of limit points, with respect to FV mesh size, of globally optimal solutions and two types of stationary points to the discretized problems. We illustrate the practical behaviour of our cell-based FV discretization algorithm on a numerical example.

In this paper, we discuss an hp-discontinuous Galerkin finite element method (hp-DGFEM) for the laser surface hardening of steel, which is a constrained optimal control problem governed by a system of differential equations, consisting of an ordinary differential equation for austenite formation and a semi-linear parabolic differential equation for temperature evolution. The space discretization of the state variable is done using an hp-DGFEM, time and control discretizations are based on a discontinuous Galerkin method. A priori error estimates are developed at different discretization levels. Numerical experiments presented justify the theoretical order of convergence obtained.

We propose transmission conditions of order 1, 2 and 3 approximating the shielding behaviour of thin conducting curved sheets for the magneto-quasistatic eddy current model in 2D. This model reduction applies to sheets whose thicknesses ε are at the order of the skin depth or essentially smaller. The sheet has itself not to be resolved, only its midline is represented by an interface. The computation is directly in one step with almost no additional cost. We prove the well-posedness w.r.t. to the small parameter ε and obtain optimal bound for the modelling error outside the sheet of order $\varepsilon^{N+1}$ for the condition of order N. We end the paper with numerical experiments involving high order finite elements for sheets with varying curvature.

This paper proposes a linear discrete-time scheme for general nonlinear cross-diffusion systems. The scheme can be regarded as an extension of a linear scheme based on the nonlinear Chernoff formula for the degenerate parabolic equations, which proposed by Berger et al. [RAIRO Anal. Numer.13 (1979) 297–312]. We analyze stability and convergence of the linear scheme. To this end, we apply the theory of reaction-diffusion system approximation. After discretizing the scheme in space, we obtain a versatile, easy to implement and efficient numerical scheme for the cross-diffusion systems. Numerical experiments are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Caused by the problem of unilateral contact during vibrations of satellite solar arrays, the aim of this paper is to better understand such a phenomenon. Therefore, it is studied here a simplified model composed by a beam moving between rigid obstacles. Our purpose is to describe and compare some families of fully discretized approximations and their properties, in the case of non-penetration Signorini's conditions. For this, starting from the works of Dumont and Paoli, we adapt to our beam model the singular dynamic method introduced by Renard. A particular emphasis is given in the use of a restitution coefficient in the impact law. Finally, various numerical results are presented and energy conservation capabilities of the schemes are investigated.

In several practically interesting applications of electromagnetic scattering theory like, e.g., scattering from small point-like objects such as buried artifacts or small inclusions in non-destructive testing, scattering from thin curve-like objects such as wires or tubes, or scattering from thin sheet-like objects such as cracks, the volume of the scatterers is small relative to the volume of the surrounding medium and with respect to the wave length of the applied electromagnetic fields. This smallness typically causes problems when solving direct scattering problems due to the need to discretize the objects and also when solving inverse scattering problems because small objects have very little effect on electromagnetic fields. In this paper we consider an asymptotic representation formula for scattered electromagnetic waves caused by low volume objects contained in some otherwise homogeneous three-dimensional bounded domain, assuming only that the scatterers are measurable and well-separated from the boundary of the domain. The formula yields a very general asymptotic model for electromagnetic scattering due to low volume objects that can either be used to simulate the corresponding electromagnetic fields or as the foundation of efficient reconstruction methods for inverse scattering problems with low volume scatterers. Our analysis extends results originally obtained in [Y. Capdeboscq and M.S. Vogelius, A general representation formula for boundary voltage perturbations caused by internal conductivity inhomogeneities of low volume fraction. Math. Model. Numer. Anal. 37 (2003) 159–173] for steady state voltage potentials to time-harmonic Maxwell's equations.