Category: News

Rekha Khot Thursday 06th Oct at 15:00   ABSTRACT: The lowest-order nonconforming virtual element extends the Morley triangular element to polygons for the approximation of the weak solution $u \in  V := H_0^2(Ω)$ to the biharmonic equation. Two nonconforming virtual element spaces have been introduced in [1, 4] for $H^3$ regular solutions, while a medius analysis in [3] allows minimal regularity. In this talk, we will discuss an abstract framework (cf. [2]) with two hypotheses (H1)-(H2) for unified stability and a priori error analysis of at least two different discrete spaces (even a mixture of those). A smoother J allows rough source terms $F \in V^∗ = H^{−2}(\Omega)$. The a priori and a posteriori error analysis circumvents any trace of second derivatives by a computable conforming companion operator $J : V_h \rightarrow V$ from the nonconforming virtual element space $V_h$. The operator J is a right-inverse of the interpolation operator and leads to optimal error estimates in piecewise Sobolev norms without any additional regularity assumptions on $$u \in V$$. As a smoother the companion operator modifies the discrete right-hand side and then allows a quasi-best approximation. An explicit residual-based a posteriori error estimator is reliable and efficient up to data oscillations. Numerical examples display the predicted empirical convergence rates for uniform and optimal convergence rates for adaptive mesh-refinement. [1] P. F. Antonietti, G. Manzini, and M. Verani, The fully nonconforming virtual element method for biharmonic problems, Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci., 28 (2018), pp. 387–407. [2] C. Carstensen, R. Khot, and A. K. Pani, Nonconforming virtual elements for the biharmonic equation with Morley degrees of freedom on polygonal meshes, arXiv:2205.08764, (2022). [3] J. Huang and Y. Yu, A medius error analysis for nonconforming virtual element methods for Poisson and biharmonic equations, J. Comput. Appl. Math., 386 (2021), p. 21. [4] J. Zhao, B. Zhang,…

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Alexandre IMPERIALE Wednesday 21th Sep at 15:00   ABSTRACT: The Department of Imaging and Simulation for Control (DISC) at CEA – LIST is dedicated to developing Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) methods in advanced industrial contexts (e.g. nuclear energy, aeronautic, or petrochemical industries). Amongst different testing modalities, Ultrasonic Testing (UT) is widespread and plays a major role in numerous industrial processes. It relies on the propagation of mechanical waves in order to probe critical specimens, often formed with complex media – in terms of geometry or material properties. To fully understand the capabilities and performances of UT experiments, the DISC is developing modelling tools for wave propagation, which are bound to incorporate the CIVA platform [1] – a commercial software dedicated to NDT modelling. When commercializing modelling tools, efficiency and robustness are key features. This talk focuses on numerical methods for wave propagation problems that address these challenges. In particular, we show how the combination of Spectral Finite Elements [2] with the Mortar Element method [3] – a domain decomposition approach – can be tuned to render efficient and robust algorithms [4]. Coupled with high-frequency asymptotic methods [5] (e.g. ray-based algorithms), this combination forms the basis of various advances in the CIVA platform. This approach is typically used to modelling UT experiments relying on bulk wave propagation, e.g. for testing welds (typical nuclear energy industry applications) or composite materials [6] (typical aeronautic industry applications). Additionally, we present some details on ongoing works related to other UT configurations, such as numerical modelling of wave propagation through thin layers – based on effective transmission conditions – or within plate-like geometries – achieved through dedicated time schemes. [1] http://www.extende.com/civa-in-a-few-words [2] Cohen, G. C. “Higher-order numerical methods for transient wave equations”. Berlin: Springer, 2002 Vol. 5. [3] F. Ben Belgacem, Y. Maday, “The mortar element method…

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Daniel Zegarra Vasquez Thursday 5th May at 11:00   ABSTRACT: In underground environments, fractures are very numerous and present at all scales, with very heterogeneous sizes. In particular for flows, they are preferential channels: flows are much faster there than in the neighboring rock. Indeed, the permeability of rock is generally about two orders of magnitude lower than that of fractures. This makes fractures play a vital role in a large number of industrial and environmental applications. These particularities of the fractured porous domain make the modeling and simulation of the flows passing through it a major challenge today for which it is necessary to develop dedicated, robust and efficient models and numerical methods. The most commonly used model for representing fractures is the discrete fracture network (DFN) in which fractures are represented as structures of codimension 1. The model of single-phase flows in fractured porous media is described in [5]. The particularity of the fractured porous problem, compared to the porous-only or fractured-only problem [3], is the coupling between the flow in the fractures and the flow in the rock. Due to the difficulties encountered in taking into account the geometric complexity of large fractured networks in simulations, the test cases recently proposed in the literature are mainly 2D, or 3D with a limited number (about ten) of fractures [1]. In this talk, we will present the nef-flow-fpm solver, which solves the stationary 3D fractured porous problem using the mixed hybrid finite element method. The method developed in the solver is inspired by [4]. To mesh the domain, a first simplical and conforming 2D mesh is generated for the DFN and for the boundaries of the domain, then a second simplical and conforming 3D mesh is generated from the first mesh. The solvers integrated in nef-flow-fpm are direct solvers,…

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Christoph Lehrenfeld Thursday 7th April at 11:00   ABSTRACT: Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods are widely used to discretize partial differential equations (PDEs) due to (a.o.) flexibility for designing robust methods and simplicity in terms of data structures. One major drawback of DG methods is, however, the increased number of (globally coupled) degrees of freedom (ndof) compared to, for instance, continuous Galerkin methods. One – by now established – remedy is the use of Hybrid DG methods. These allow reducing the globally coupled ndof essentially by introducing the concept of static condensation for DG methods. Thereby the dimensions of global linear systems that need to be solved for reduced from O(p^d) to O(p^{d−1}), where d is the space dimension and p is the polynomial degree of the finite element space. A different approach is the use of Trefftz DG methods, where a DG formulation is modified by restricting the finite element spaces to functions that element-wise solve the PDE at hand. This results in a similar reduction of globally coupled ndof, cf. Figure 1 below. However, due to several limitations, Trefftz DG methods have only been applied for special PDEs so far. On the one hand, the finite element spaces have to be specifically tailored for each PDE type, on the other hand, inhomogeneous equations and non-constant coefficients in the differential operators are difficult to deal with and rarely treated. In this talk, we introduce Embedded Trefftz DG methods which exploit the existence of an underlying standard DG formulation for an efficient and flexible implementation of Trefftz DG methods. Furthermore, we relax Trefftz DG methods in view of the constraints on the finite element space leading to weak Trefftz DG spaces. Both together allow us to remove the limitations of Trefftz DG methods in order to enable them for a large…

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Christos Xenophontos Tuesday 19th April at 14:00   ABSTRACT: We consider singularly perturbed eigenvalue problems in one-dimension, and their numerical approximation by the (standard Galerkin) Finite Element Method (FEM). These are fourth order equations, where a small parameter multiplies the highest order derivative. We will present results for an $h$ version FEM with polynomials of degree $p$ on an exponentially graded (eXp) mesh, as well as an $hp$ version FEM on the so-called Spectral Boundary Layer (SBL) mesh. For both methods, robust optimal convergence is shown for the eigenvalues and associated eigenfunctions. Numerical results, illustrating the theory, will also be presented. This is joint work with H. G. Roos.

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Miloslav Vlasak Thursday 24th March at 11:00   ABSTRACT: We will present a posteriori error estimate for higher-order time discretizations, most importantly for the discontinuous Galerkin method, cf. [1]. Rather than the presentation of the estimates themselves, the talk shall focus on the most important ideas behind and their possible application to spatial nonconforming discretizations, most importantly to the discontinuous Galerkin method again. Overall, the talk shall rather focus on open problems than on the presentation of the fully completed results. Additionally, the ideas of reconstructions by the Radau polynomials that are the core ideas in a posteriori error estimates for time discretizations can be exploited for the direct efficiency analysis of the derived estimates. This can enable tracking the dependence of the efficiency constant on the discretization polynomial degree in 1D, cf. [2]. Possible extensions of this result to multiple dimensions shall be discussed. References [1] V. Dolejsi, F. Roskovec, M. Vlasak: A posteriori error estimates for higher order space-time Galerkin discretizations of nonlinear parabolic problems, SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 59, N. 3, 1486–1509 (2021) [2] M. Vlasak: On polynomial robustness of flux reconstructions, Appl. Math. 65, N. 2, 153–172 (2020)

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‪Idrissa Niakh Thursday 14th April at 11:00   ABSTRACT: We consider model reduction for linear variational inequalities with parameter-dependent constraints. We study the stability of the reduced problem in the context of a dualized formulation of the constraints using Lagrange multipliers. Our main result is an algorithm that guarantees inf-sup stability of the reduced problem. The algorithm is computationally effective since it can be performed in the offline phase even for parameter-dependent constraints. Moreover, we also propose a modification of the Cone Projected Greedy algorithm so as to avoid ill-conditioning issues when manipulating the reduced dual basis. Our results are illustrated numerically on the frictionless Hertz contact problem between two half-spheres with parameter-dependent radius and on the membrane obstacle problem with parameter-dependent obstacle geometry.

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Ruma Maity‬‬ Thursday 10th March at 11:00   ABSTRACT: In this talk, we focus on the analysis of a free energy functional, that models a dilute suspension of magnetic nanoparticles in a two-dimensional nematic well, referred to as ferronematics. We discuss the asymptotic analysis of global energy minimizers in the limit of vanishing elastic constant, where the re-scaled elastic constant l is inversely proportional to the domain area. The conforming finite element method is used to approximate the regular solutions of the corresponding non-linear system of partial differential equations with cubic nonlinearity and non-homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions. We establish the existence and local uniqueness of the discrete solutions, error estimates in the energy and L2 norms with l- discretization parameter dependency. The theoretical results are complemented by the numerical experiments on the discrete solution profiles, and the numerical convergence rates that corroborate the theoretical estimates. This talk is based on joint works with Apala Majumdar (Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Strathclyde, UK) and Neela Nataraj (Department of Mathematics, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India).

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