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Now showing 1 - 10 of 21
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    Divergence-free reconstruction operators for pressure-robust Stokes discretizations with continuous pressure finite elements
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2016) Lederer, Philip L.; Linke, Alexander; Merdon, Christian; Schöberl, Joachim
    Classical inf-sup stable mixed finite elements for the incompressible (Navier-)Stokes equations are not pressure-robust, i.e., their velocity errors depend on the continuous pressure. However, a modification only in the right hand side of a Stokes discretization is able to reestablish pressure-robustness, as shown recently for several inf-sup stable Stokes elements with discontinuous discrete pressures. In this contribution, this idea is extended to low and high order Taylor-Hood and mini elements, which have continuous discrete pressures. For the modification of the right hand side a velocity reconstruction operator is constructed that maps discretely divergence-free test functions to exactly divergence-free ones. The reconstruction is based on local H (div)-conforming flux equilibration on vertex patches, and fulfills certain orthogonality properties to provide consistency and optimal a-priori error estimates. Numerical examples for the incompressible Stokes and Navier-Stokes equations confirm that the new pressure-robust Taylor-Hood and mini elements converge with optimal order and outperform significantly the classical versions of those elements when the continuous pressure is comparably large.
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    Divergence-preserving reconstructions on polygons and a really pressure-robust virtual element method for the Stokes problem
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2020) Frerichs, Derk; Merdon, Christian
    Non divergence-free discretisations for the incompressible Stokes problem may suffer from a lack of pressure-robustness characterised by large discretisations errors due to irrotational forces in the momentum balance. This paper argues that also divergence-free virtual element methods (VEM) on polygonal meshes are not really pressure-robust as long as the right-hand side is not discretised in a careful manner. To be able to evaluate the right-hand side for the testfunctions, some explicit interpolation of the virtual testfunctions is needed that can be evaluated pointwise everywhere. The standard discretisation via an L2 -bestapproximation does not preserve the divergence and so destroys the orthogonality between divergence-free testfunctions and possibly eminent gradient forces in the right-hand side. To repair this orthogonality and restore pressure-robustness another divergence-preserving reconstruction is suggested based on Raviart--Thomas approximations on local subtriangulations of the polygons. All findings are proven theoretically and are demonstrated numerically in two dimensions. The construction is also interesting for hybrid high-order methods on polygonal or polyhedral meshes.
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    On spurious oscillations due to irrotational forces in the Navier-Stokes momentum balance
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2015) Linke, Alexander; Merdon, Christian
    This contribution studies the in uence of the pressure on the velocity error in finite element discretisations of the Navier-Stokes equations. Three simple benchmark problems that are all close to real-world applications convey that the pressure can be comparably large and is not to be underestimated. For widely used finite element methods like the Taylor-Hood finite element method, such relatively large pressures can lead to spurious oscillations and arbitrarily large errors in the velocity, even if the exact velocity is in the ansatz space. Only mixed finite element methods, whose velocity error is pressure-independent, like the Scott-Vogelius finite element method can avoid this influence.
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    Guaranteed error control for the pseudostress approximation of the Stokes equations
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2015) Bringmann, Philipp; Carstensen, Carsten; Merdon, Christian
    The pseudostress approximation of the Stokes equations rewrites the stationary Stokes equations with pure (but possibly inhomogeneous) Dirichlet boundary conditions as another (equivalent) mixed scheme based on a stress in H (div) and the velocity in L2. Any standard mixed finite element function space can be utilized for this mixed formulation, e.g. the Raviart-Thomas discretization which is related to the Crouzeix-Raviart nonconforming finite element scheme in the lowest-order case. The effective and guaranteed a posteriori error control for this nonconforming velocity-oriented discretization can be generalized to the error control of some piecewise quadratic velocity approximation that is related to the discrete pseudostress. The analysis allows for local inf-sup constants which can be chosen in a global partition to improve the estimation. Numerical examples provide strong evidence for an effective and guaranteed error control with very small overestimation factors even for domains with large anisotropy.
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    An adaptive multi level Monte-Carlo method with stochastic bounds for quantities of interest in groundwater flow with uncertain data
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2015) Eigel, Martin; Merdon, Christian; Neumann, Johannes
    The focus of this work is the introduction of some computable a posteriori error control to the popular multilevel Monte Carlo sampling for PDE with stochastic data. We are especially interested in applications in the geosciences such as groundwater flow with rather rough stochastic fields for the conductive permeability. With a spatial discretisation based on finite elements, a goal functional is defined which encodes the quantity of interest. The devised goal-oriented error estimator enables to determine guaranteed a posteriori error bounds for this quantity. In particular, it allows for the adaptive refinement of the mesh hierarchy used in the multilevel Monte Carlo simulation. In addition to controlling the deterministic error, we also suggest how to treat the stochastic error in probability. Numerical experiments illustrate the performance of the presented adaptive algorithm for a posteriori error control in multilevel Monte Carlo methods. These include a localised goal with problem-adapted meshes and a slit domain example. The latter demonstrates the refinement of regions with low solution regularity based on an inexpensive explicit error estimator in the multilevel algorithm.
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    On really locking-free mixed finite element methods for the transient incompressible Stokes equations
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2017) Ahmed, Naveed; Linke, Alexander; Merdon, Christian
    Inf-sup stable mixed methods for the steady incompressible Stokes equations that relax the divergence constraint are often claimed to deliver locking-free discretizations. However, this relaxation leads to a pressure-dependent contribution in the velocity error, which is proportional to the inverse of the viscosity, thus giving rise to a (different) locking phenomenon. However, a recently proposed modification of the right hand side alone leads to a discretization that is really locking-free, i.e., its velocity error converges with optimal order and is independent of the pressure and the smallness of the viscosity. In this contribution, we extend this approach to the transient incompressible Stokes equations, where besides the right hand side also the velocity time derivative requires an improved space discretization. Semi-discrete and fully-discrete a-priori velocity and pressure error estimates are derived, which show beautiful robustness properties. Two numerical examples illustrate the superior accuracy of pressure-robust space discretizations in the case of small viscosities.
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    Inverse modeling of thin layer flow cells for detection of solubility, transport and reaction coefficients from experimental data
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2015) Fuhrmann, Jürgen; Linke, Alexander; Merdon, Christian; Neumann, Felix; Streckenbach, Timo; Baltruschat, Helmut; Khodayari, Mehdi
    Thin layer flow cells are used in electrochemical research as experimental devices which allow to perform investigations of electrocatalytic surface reactions under controlled conditions using reasonably small electrolyte volumes. The paper introduces a general approach to simulate the complete cell using accurate numerical simulation of the coupled flow, transport and reaction processes in a flow cell. The approach is based on a mass conservative coupling of a divergence-free finite element method for fluid flow and a stable finite volume method for mass transport. It allows to perform stable and efficient forward simulations that comply with the physical bounds namely mass conservation and maximum principles for the involved species. In this context, several recent approaches to obtain divergence-free velocities from finite element simulations are discussed. In order to perform parameter identification, the forward simulation method is coupled to standard optimization tools. After an assessment of the inverse modeling approach using known real-istic data, first results of the identification of solubility and transport data for O2 dissolved in organic electrolytes are presented. A plausibility study for a more complex situation with surface reactions concludes the paper and shows possible extensions of the scope of the presented numerical tools.
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    Refined a posteriori error estimation for classical and pressure-robust Stokes finite element methods
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2017) Lederer, Philip Lukas; Merdon, Christian; Schöberl, Joachim
    Recent works showed that pressure-robust modifications of mixed finite element methods for the Stokes equations outperform their standard versions in many cases. This is achieved by divergence-free reconstruction operators and results in pressure-independent velocity error estimates which are robust with respect to small viscosities. In this paper we develop a posteriori error control which reflects this robustness. The main difficulty lies in the volume contribution of the standard residual-based approach that includes the L2-norm of the right-hand side. However, the velocity is only steered by the divergence-free part of this source term. An efficient error estimator must approximate this divergence-free part in a proper manner, otherwise it can be dominated by the pressure error. To overcome this difficulty a novel approach is suggested that uses arguments from the stream function and vorticity formulation of the NavierStokes equations. The novel error estimators only take the curl of the righthand side into account and so lead to provably reliable, efficient and pressure-independent upper bounds in case of a pressure-robust method in particular in pressure-dominant situations. This is also confirmed by some numerical examples with the novel pressure-robust modifications of the TaylorHood and mini finite element methods.
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    Robust equilibration a posteriori error estimation for convection-diffusion-reaction problems
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2013) Eigel, Martin; Merdon, Christian
    We study a posteriori error estimates for convection-diffusion-reaction problems with possibly dominating convection or reaction and inhomogeneous boundary conditions. For the conforming FEM discretisation with streamline diffusion stabilisation (SDM), we derive robust and efficient error estimators based on the reconstruction of equilibrated fluxes in an admissible discrete subspace of H(div, Omega). Error estimators of this type have become popular recently since they provide guaranteed error bounds without further unknown constants. The estimators can be improved significantly by some postprocessing and divergence correction technique. For an extension of the energy norm by a dual norm of some part of the differential operator, complete independence from the coefficients of the problem is achieved. Numerical benchmarks illustrate the very good performance of the error estimators in the convection dominated and the singularly perturbed cases.
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    Local equilibration error estimators for guaranteed error control in adaptive stochastic higher-order Galerkin FEM
    (Berlin : Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik, 2014) Eigel, Martin; Merdon, Christian
    Equilibration error estimators have been shown to commonly lead to very accurate guaranteed error bounds in the a posteriori error control of finite element methods for second order elliptic equations. Here, we extend previous results by the design of equilibrated fluxes for higher-order finite element methods with nonconstant coefficients and illustrate the favourable performance of different variants of the error estimator within two deterministic benchmark settings. After the introduction of the respective parametric problem with stochastic coefficients and the stochastic Galerkin FEM discretisation, a novel a posteriori error estimator for the stochastic error in the energy norm is devised. The error estimation is based on the stochastic residual and its decomposition into approximation residuals and a truncation error of the stochastic discretisation. Importantly, by using the derived deterministic equilibration techniques for the approximation residuals, the computable error bound is guaranteed for the considered class of problems. An adaptive algorithm allows the simultaneous refinement of the deterministic mesh and the stochastic discretisation in anisotropic Legendre polynomial chaos. Several stochastic benchmark problems illustrate the efficiency of the adaptive process.