24 November – Grégory Etangsale: A primal hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin method for modelling flows in fractured porous media

Grégory Etangsale: Wednesday 24th November at 10:30   ABSTRACT: Modeling fluid flow in fractured porous media has received tremendous attention from engineering, geophysical, and other research fields over the past decades. We focus here on large fractures described individually in the porous medium, which act as preferential paths or barriers to the flow. Two different approaches are available from a computational aspect: The first one, and definitively the oldest, consists of meshing inside the fracture. In this case, the flow is governed by a single Darcy equation characterized by a large scale of variation of the permeability coefficient within the matrix region and the fracture, respectively. However, this description becomes quite challenging since it requires a considerable amount of memory storage, severely increasing the CPU time. A more recent approach differs by considering the fracture as an encapsulated object of lower dimension, i.e., (d − 1)-dimension. As a result, the flow process is now governed by distinctive equations in the matrix region and fractures, respectively. Thus, coupling conditions are added to close the problem. This mathematical description of the fractured porous media has been initially introduced by Martin et al. in [4] and is referred to as the Discrete Fracture-Matrix (DFM) model. The DFM description is particularly attractive since it significantly simplifies the meshing of fractures and allows the coupling of distinctive discretizations such as Discontinuous and Continuous Galerkin methods inside the bulk region and the fracture network, respectively. For instance, we refer the reader to the recent works of Antonietti et al. [1] (and references therein), where the authors coupled the Interior Penalty DG method with the (standard) H1-Conforming finite element method to solve the DFM problem (see e.g., [3]). However, it is well-known that DG methods are generally more expensive than most other numerical methods due to their high…

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06 September – Rolf Stenberg: Nitsche’s Method for Elastic Contact Problems

Rolf Stenberg: Monday 06th June at 15:00   ABSTRACT: In this talk, we present a priori and a posteriori error estimates for the frictionless contact problem between two elastic bodies. The analysis is built upon interpreting Nitsche’s method as a stabilised finite element method for which the error estimates can be derived with minimal regularity assumptions and without a saturation assumption. The stabilising term corresponds to a master-slave mortaring technique on the contact boundary. The numerical experiments show the robustness of Nitsche’s method and corroborate the efficiency of the a posteriori error estimators. [1] T. Gustafsson, R. Stenberg, J. Videman. On Nitsche’s method for elastic contact problems. SIAM Journal of Scientific Computing. 42 (2020) B425–B446 [2] T. Gustafsson, R. Stenberg, J. Videman. The masters-slave Nitsche method for elastic contact problems. Numerical Mathematics and Advanced Applications – ENUMATH 2019. J.F. Vermolen, C. Vuik, M. Moller (Eds.). Springer Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering. 2021

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17 June – Elyes Ahmed: Adaptive fully-implicit solvers and a posteriori error control for multiphase flow with wells

Elyes Ahmed: Thursday 17 June at 11:00 am   ABSTRACT: Flow is driven by the wells in most reservoir simulation workflows. From a numerical point of view,  wells can be seen as singular source-terms due to their small-scale relative to grid blocks used in field-scale simulation. Near-well models, such as Peaceman model, are used to account for the highly non-linear flow field in the vicinity of the wellbore. The singularities that wells introduce in the solution create difficulties for the gridding strategy and usually result in a less flexible time-stepping strategy to ensure convergence of the nonlinear solver. We present in this work a-posteriori error estimators for multiphase flow with singular well sources. The estimators are fully and locally computable and target the singular effects of wells.  The error estimate uses the appropriate weighted norms, where the weight weakens the norm only around the wells, letting it behave like the usual H^{1} -norm far from the near-well region. The error estimators are used to modify a fully implicit solver in the MATLAB Reservoir Simulation Toolbox (MRST). We demonstrate the benefits of the adaptive implicit solver through a range of test cases.

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3 June – Oliver Sutton: High order, mesh-based multigroup discrete ordinates schemes for the linear Boltzmann transport problem.

Oliver Sutton: Thursday 3 June at 11:00 am   ABSTRACT: The linear Boltzmann problem is a widely used model for the transport of particles through a scattering medium, such as neutrons in a nuclear reactor, or photons during radiotherapy or in the atmosphere of a star. The key challenge in simulating such phenomena using this model lies in the fact that the problem is an integro-partial-differential equation in 6 independent variables: three position variables and three momentum variables (7 if time is also included). Despite this, there is a long history of this model being successfully applied in practice. A well-studied class of numerical schemes for simulating phenomena governed by this model couples a discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretisation with a multigroup discrete-ordinates discretisation in the momentum variables. Standard multigroup discrete ordinates discretisations may be viewed as employing a piecewise constant approximation space, and possess the particularly attractive characteristic of decoupling the fully-coupled problem into a sequence of three-dimensional linear transport problems which may be solved independently and in parallel. In this talk, we will discuss a new generalisation of these multigroup discrete ordinates schemes. These new schemes employ arbitrarily high order polynomials in the discretisation of the momentum variables, providing high order convergence properties, and offer a familiar Galerkin framework for their analysis. Crucially, moreover, they retain the simple algorithmic structure of their classical counterparts.

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29 April – Lorenzo Mascotto: Enriched nonconforming virtual element methods

Lorenzo Mascotto: Thursday 29 April at 11:00 am ABSTRACT: Solutions to elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs) on smooth domains with smooth data are smooth. However, when solving a PDE on a Lipschitz polygon, its solution is singular at the vertices of the domain. The singular behaviour is known a priori: the solution can be split as a sum of a smooth term, plus series of singular terms that belong to the kernel of the differential operator appearing in the PDE. The virtual element method (VEM) is a generalization of the finite element method (FEM) to polygonal/polyhedral meshes and is based on approximation spaces consisting of solutions to local problems mimicking the target PDE and has been recently generalized to the extended VEM (XVEM). Here, the approximation spaces are enriched with suitable singular functions. A partition of unity (PU) is used to patch local spaces. The approach of the XVEM is close to that of the extended FEM. In this talk, we present a new paradigm for enriching virtual element (VE) spaces. Instead of adding special functions to the global space and eventually patch local spaces with a PU, we modify the definition of the local spaces by tuning the boundary conditions of local problems. By doing this, local VE spaces contain the desired singular functions, but there is no need to patch them with a PU. This results in an effective and slight modification of the already existing implementation of VE codes, as well as in a natural extension for existing theoretical results.

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1 April – André Harnist: Improved error estimates for Hybrid High-Order discretizations of Leray–Lions problems

André Harnist: Thursday 1 April at 11:00 am Abstract: We consider Hybrid High-Order (HHO) approximations of Leray-Lions problems set in W^(1,p) with p in (1,2]. For this class of problems, negative powers of the gradient of the solution can appear in the flux. Depending on the expression of the latter, this can lead to a degeneracy of the problem when the gradient of the solution vanishes or becomes large. The goal of this presentation is to derive novel error estimates depending on the degeneracy of the problem inspired by [1,2,3]. Specifically, we show that, for the globally non-degenerate case, the energy-norm of the error has a convergence rate of (k+1), with k denoting the degree of the HHO approximation. In the globally degenerate case, on the other hand, the energy-norm of the error converges with a rate of (k+1)(p-1), coherently with the estimate originally proved in [4]. We additionally introduce, for each mesh element, a dimensionless number that captures the local degeneracy of the model and identifies the contribution of the element to the global error: from the fully degenerate regime, corresponding to a contribution in (k+1)(p-1), to the non-degenerate regime, corresponding to a contribution in (k+1), through all intermediate regimes. These regime-dependent error estimates are illustrated by a complete panel of numerical experiments. [1] M. Botti, D. Castanon Quiroz, D. A. Di Pietro and A. Harnist, A Hybrid High-Order method for creeping flows of non-Newtonian fluids, Submitted. 2020. URL: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02519233. [2] D. A. Di Pietro and J. Droniou, The Hybrid High-Order Method for Polytopal Meshes. Modelling, Simulation and Application 19. Springer International Publishing, 2020. ISBN: 978-3-030-37202-6 (Hardcover) 978-3-030-37203-3 (eBook). DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-37203-3. [3] D. A. Di Pietro and J. Droniou, A Hybrid High-Order method for Leray–Lions elliptic equations on general meshes, Math. Comp., volume 86, 2017, number 307, pages 2159–2191,…

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11 March – Omar Duran: Explicit and implicit hybrid high-order methods for the wave equation in time regime

Omar Duran: Thursday 11 March at 15:00 There are two main approaches to derive a fully discrete method for solving the second-order acoustic wave equation in the time regime. One is to discretize directly the second-order time derivative and the Laplacian operator in space. The other approach is to transform the second-order equation into a first-order hyperbolic system. Firstly, we consider the time second-order form. We devise, analyze the energy-conservation properties, and evaluate numerically a hybrid high-order (HHO) scheme for the space discretization combined with a Newmark-like time-marching scheme. The HHO method uses as discrete unknowns cell- and face-based polynomials of some order 0 ≤ k, yielding for steady problems optimal convergence of order (k + 1) in the energy norm [1]. Secondly, inspired by ideas presented in [2] for hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) method and the link between HDG and HHO methods in the steady case [3], first-order explicit or implicit time-marching schemes combined with the HHO method for space discretization are considered. We discuss the selection of the stabilization term and energy conservation and present numerical examples. Extension to the unfitted meshes is contemplated for the acoustic wave equation. We observe that the unfitted approach combined with local cell agglomeration leads to a comparable CFL condition as when using fitted meshes [4]. [1] D.A. Di Pietro, A. Ern, and S. Lemaire. An arbitrary-order and compact-stencil discretization of diffusion on general meshes based on local reconstruction operators. Computational Methods in Applied Mathematics. 14 (2014) 461-472. [2] M. Stanglmeier, N.C. Nguyen, J. Peraire, and B. Cockburn. An explicit hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin method for the acoustic wave equation. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 300:748–769, March 2016. [3] B. Cockburn, D. A. Di Pietro, and A. Ern. Bridging the hybrid high-order and hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin methods. ESAIM: Mathematical Modelling and…

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25 February – Buyang Li : A bounded numerical solution with a small mesh size implies existence of a smooth solution to the time-dependent Navier–Stokes equations

Buyang Li: Thursday 25 February at 14:00 We prove that for a given smooth initial value, if one finite element solution of the three-dimensional time-dependent Navier–Stokes equations is bounded by $M$ when some sufficiently small step size $\tau < \tau _M$ and mesh size $h < h_M$ are used, then the true solution of the Navier–Stokes equations with this given initial value must be smooth and unique, and is successfully approximated by the numerical solution.

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18 February – Roland Maier : Multiscale scattering in nonlinear Kerr-type media

18 February – Roland Maier Wave propagation in heterogeneous and nonlinear media has arisen growing interest in the last years since corresponding materials can lead to unusual and interesting effects and therefore come with a wide range of applications. An important example of such materials is Kerr-type media, where the intensity of a wave directly influences the refractive index. In the time-harmonic regime, this effect can be modeled with a nonlinear Helmholtz equation. If underlying material coefficients are highly oscillatory on a microscopic scale, the numerical approximation of corresponding solutions can be a delicate task. In this talk, a multiscale technique is presented that allows one to deal with microscopic coefficients in a nonlinear Helmholtz equation without the need for global fine-scale computations. The method is based on an iterative and adaptive construction of appropriate multiscale spaces based on the multiscale method known as Localized Orthogonal Decomposition, which works under minimal structural assumptions. This talk is based on joint work with Barbara Verfürth (KIT, Karlsruhe)  

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December 10 – Ani Miraçi: A-posteriori-steered and adaptive p-robust multigrid solvers

Ani Miraçi: Thursday 10 December at 16:00 via this link with meeting ID: 950 9381 2553 and code: 077683 We consider systems of linear algebraic equations arising from discretizations of second-order elliptic partial differential equations using finite elements of arbitrary polynomial degree. First, we propose an a posteriori estimator of the algebraic error, the construction of which is linked to that of a multigrid solver without pre-smoothing and a single post-smoothing step by overlapping Schwarz methods (block-Jacobi). We prove the following results and their equivalence: the solver contracts the algebraic error independently of the polynomial degree (p-robustness); the estimator represents a two-sided p-robust bound of the algebraic error. Next, we introduce optimal step-sizes which minimize the error at each level. This makes it possible to have an explicit Pythagorean formula for the algebraic error; this in turn serves as the foundation for a simple and efficient adaptive strategy allowing to choose the number of post-smoothing steps per level. We also introduce an adaptive local smoothing strategy thanks to our efficient and localized estimator of the algebraic error by levels/patches of elements. Patches contributing more than a user-prescribed percentage to the overall error are marked via a bulk-chasing criterion. Each iteration is composed of a non-adaptive V-cycle and an adaptive V-cycle which uses local smoothing only in the marked patches. These V-cycles contract the algebraic error in a p-robust fashion. Finally, we also extend some the above results to a mixed finite elements setting in two space dimensions. A variety of numerical tests is presented to confirm our theoretical results and to illustrate the advantages of our approaches.

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