Mixed time discontinuous space-time finite element method for convection diffusion equations

A mixed time discontinuous space-time finite element scheme for secondorder convection diffusion problems is constructed and analyzed. Order of the equation is lowered by the mixed finite element method. The low order equation is discretized with a space-time finite element method, continuous in space but discontinuous in time. Stability, existence, uniqueness and convergence of the approximate solutions are proved. Numerical results are presented to illustrate efficiency of the proposed method.

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF UNSTEADY-STATE UNDEREXPANDED JET USING DISCONTINUOUS GALERKIN FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

A discontinuous Galerkin finite element method （DG-FEM） is developed for solving the axisymmetric Euler equations based on two-dimensional conservation laws. The method is used to simulate the unsteady-state underexpanded axisymmetric jet. Several flow property distributions along the jet axis, including density, pres- sure and Mach number are obtained and the qualitative flowfield structures of interest are well captured using the proposed method, including shock waves, slipstreams, traveling vortex ring and multiple Mach disks. Two Mach disk locations agree well with computational and experimental measurement results. It indicates that the method is robust and efficient for solving the unsteady-state underexpanded axisymmetric jet.

NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF TOROIDAL SHOCK WAVES FOCUSING USING DISCONTINUOUS GALERKIN FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

A numerical simulation of the toroidal shock wave focusing in a co-axial cylindrical shock tube is inves- tigated by using discontinuous Galerkin （DG） finite element method to solve the axisymmetric Euler equations. For validating the numerical method, the shock-tube problem with exact solution is computed, and the computed results agree well with the exact cases. Then, several cases with higher incident Mach numbers varying from 2.0 to 5.0 are simulated. Simulation results show that complicated flow-field structures of toroidal shock wave diffraction, reflection, and focusing in a co-axial cylindrical shock tube can be obtained at different incident Mach numbers and the numerical solutions appear steep gradients near the focusing point, which illustrates the DG method has higher accuracy and better resolution near the discontinuous point. Moreover, the focusing peak pres- sure with different grid scales is compared.

H^1 space-time discontinuous finite element method for convection-diffusion equations

An H1 space-time discontinuous Galerkin （STDG） scheme for convection- diffusion equations in one spatial dimension is constructed and analyzed. This method is formulated by combining the H1 Galerkin method and the space-time discontinuous finite element method that is discontinuous in time and continuous in space. The existence and the uniqueness of the approximate solution are proved. The convergence of the scheme is analyzed by using the techniques in the finite difference and finite element methods. An optimal a-priori error estimate in the L∞ （H1） norm is derived. The numerical exper- iments are presented to verify the theoretical results.

THE SPACE-TIME FINITE ELEMENT METHOD FOR PARABOLIC PROBLEMS

Adaptive space-time finite element method, continuous in space but discontinuous in time for semi-linear parabolic problems is discussed. The approach is based on a combination of finite element and finite difference techniques. The existence and uniqueness of the weak solution are proved without any assumptions on choice of the spacetime meshes. Basic error estimates in L-infinity (L-2) norm, that is maximum-norm in time, L-2-norm in space are obtained. The numerical results are given in the last part and the analysis between theoretic and experimental results are obtained.

Response of thermal source in a transversely isotropic thermoelastic half-space with mass diffusion by using a finite element method

The two-dimensional problem of generalized thermoelastic diffusion material with thermal and diffusion relaxation times is investigated in the context of the Lord-Shulman theory. As an application of the problem, a particular type of thermal source is considered and the problem is solved numerically by using a finite element method. The components of displacement, stress, temperature distribution chemical potential and mass concentration are obtained. The resulting quantities are depicted graphically for a special model. An appreciable effect of relaxation times is observed on various resulting quantities.

Determination of the Minimum Testing Time for Wireline Formation Testing with the Finite Element Method

The wireline formation tester （WFT） is an important tool for formation evaluation, such as calculating the formation pressure and permeability, identifying the fluid type, and determining the interface between oil and water. However, in a low porosity and low permeability formation, the supercharge pressure effect exists, since the mudcake has a poor sealing ability. The mudcake cannot isolate the hydrostatic pressure of the formation around the borehole and the mud seeps into the formations, leading to inaccurate formation pressure measurement. At the same time, the tool can be easily stuck in the low porosity/low permeability formation due to the long waiting and testing time. We present a method for determining the minimum testing time for the wireline formation tester. The pressure distribution of the mudcake and the formation were respectively calculated with the finite element method （FEM）. The radius of the influence of mud pressure was also computed, and the minimum testing time in low porosity/low permeability formations was determined within a range of values for different formation permeabilities. The determination of the minimum testing time ensures an accurate formation pressure measurement and minimizes possible accidents due to long waiting and testing time.

Finite Element Method for a Kind of Two-Dimensional Space-Fractional Diffusion Equation with Its Implementation

In this article, we consider a two-dimensional symmetric space-fractional diffusion equation in which the space fractional derivatives are defined in Riesz potential sense. The well-posed feature is guaranteed by energy inequality. To solve the diffusion equation, a fully discrete form is established by employing Crank-Nicolson technique in time and Galerkin finite element method in space. The stability and convergence are proved and the stiffness matrix is given analytically. Three numerical examples are given to confirm our theoretical analysis in which we find that even with the same initial condition, the classical and fractional diffusion equations perform differently but tend to be uniform diffusion at last.

SPACE-TIME FINITE ELEMENT METHOD FOR SCHRDINGER EQUATION AND ITS CONSERVATION

Energy conservation of nonlinear Schrodinger ordinary differential equation was proved through using continuous finite element methods of ordinary differential equation; Energy integration conservation was proved through using space-time continuous fully discrete finite element methods and the electron nearly conservation with higher order error was obtained through using time discontinuous only space continuous finite element methods of nonlinear Schrodinger partial equation. The numerical results are in accordance with the theory.

Extended finite element-based cohesive zone method for modeling simultaneous hydraulic fracture height growth in layered reservoirs

In this study,a fully coupled hydromechanical model within the extended finite element method(XFEM)-based cohesive zone method(CZM)is employed to investigate the simultaneous height growth behavior of multi-cluster hydraulic fractures in layered porous reservoirs with modulus contrast.The coupled hydromechanical model is first verified against an analytical solution and a laboratory experiment.Then,the fracture geometry(e.g.height,aperture,and area)and fluid pressure evolutions of multiple hydraulic fractures placed in a porous reservoir interbedded with alternating stiff and soft layers are investigated using the model.The stress and pore pressure distributions within the layered reservoir during fluid injection are also presented.The simulation results reveal that stress umbrellas are easily to form among multiple hydraulic fractures’tips when propagating in soft layers,which impedes the simultaneous height growth.It is also observed that the impediment effect of soft layer is much more significant in the fractures suppressed by the preferential growth of adjoining fractures.After that,the combined effect of in situ stress ratio and fracturing spacing on the multi-fracture height growth is presented,and the results elucidate the influence of in situ stress ratio on the height growth behavior depending on the fracture spacing.Finally,it is found that the inclusion of soft layers changes the aperture distribution of outmost and interior hydraulic fractures.The results obtained from this study may provide some insights on the understanding of hydraulic fracture height containment observed in filed.

Validation and application of three-dimensional discontinuous deformation analysis with tetrahedron finite element meshed block

In the last decade, three dimensional discontin- uous deformation analyses （3D DDA） has attracted more and more attention of researchers and geotechnical engineers worldwide. The original DDA formulation utilizes a linear displacement function to describe the block movement and deformation, which would cause block expansion under rigid body rotation and thus limit its capability to model block de- formation. In this paper, 3D DDA is coupled with tetrahe- dron finite elements to tackle these two problems. Tetrahe- dron is the simplest in the 3D domain and makes it easy to implement automatic discretization, even for complex topol- ogy shape. Furthermore, element faces will remain planar and element edges will remain straight after deformation for tetrahedron finite elements and polyhedral contact detection schemes can be used directly. The matrices of equilibrium equations for this coupled method are given in detail and an effective contact searching algorithm is suggested. Valida- tion is conducted by comparing the results of the proposed coupled method with that of physical model tests using one of the most common failure modes, i.e., wedge failure. Most of the failure modes predicted by the coupled method agree with the physical model results except for 4 cases out of the total 65 cases. Finally, a complex rockslide example demon- strates the robustness and versatility of the coupled method.

Adaptive discontinuous finite element quadrature sets over an icosahedron for discrete ordinates method

The discrete ordinates(S N)method requires numerous angular unknowns to achieve the desired accu-racy for shielding calculations involving strong anisotropy.Our objective is to develop an angular adaptive algorithm in the S N method to automatically optimize the angular distribution and minimize angular discretization errors with lower expenses.The proposed method enables linear dis-continuous finite element quadrature sets over an icosahe-dron to vary their quadrature orders in a one-twentieth sphere so that fine resolutions can be applied to the angular domains that are important.An error estimation that operates in conjunction with the spherical harmonics method is developed to determine the locations where more refinement is required.The adaptive quadrature sets are applied to three duct problems,including the Kobayashi benchmarks and the IRI-TUB research reactor,which emphasize the ability of this method to resolve neutron streaming through ducts with voids.The results indicate that the performance of the adaptive method is more effi-cient than that of uniform quadrature sets for duct transport problems.Our adaptive method offers an appropriate placement of angular unknowns to accurately integrate angular fluxes while reducing the computational costs in terms of unknowns and run times.

A streamline diffusion nonconforming finite element method for the time-dependent linearized Navier-Stokes equations

A nonconforming finite element method of finite difference streamline diffusion type is proposed to solve the time-dependent linearized Navier-Stokes equations. The backward Euler scheme is used for time discretization. Crouzeix-Raviart nonconforming finite element approximation, namely, nonconforming （P1）2 - P0 element, is used for the velocity and pressure fields with the streamline diffusion technique to cope with usual instabilities caused by the convection and time terms. Stability and error estimates are derived with suitable norms.

Time domain method for calculating free field motion of a layered half-space subjected to obliquely incident body waves

In numerical simulation of wave scattering under oblique incident body waves using the finite element method, the free field motion at the incident lateral boundary induced by the background layered half-space complicates the computational area. In order to replace the complex frequency domain method, a time-domain method to calculate the free field motion of a layered half-space subjected to oblique incident body waves is developed in this paper. The new method decouples the equations of motion used in the finite element method and offers an interpolation formula of the free field motion. This formula is based on the fact that the apparent horizontal velocity of the free field motion is constant and can be calculated exactly. Both the theoretical analysis and numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method offers a high degree of accuracy.

Surrounding rock deformation analysis of underground caverns with multi-body finite element method

Discontinuous deformation problems are common in rock engineering. Numerical analysis methods based on system models of the discrete body can better solve these problems. One of the most effective solutions is discontinuous deformation analysis （DDA） method, but the DDA method brings about rock embedding problems when it uses the strain assumption in elastic deformation and adopts virtual springs to simulate the contact problems. The multi-body finite element method （FEM） proposed in this paper can solve the problems of contact and deformation of blocks very well because it integrates the FEM and multi-body system dynamics theory. It is therefore a complete method for solving discontinuous deformation problems through balance equations of the contact surface and for simulating the displacement of whole blocks. In this study, this method was successfully used for deformation analysis of underground caverns in stratified rock. The simulation results indicate that the multi-body FEM can show contact forces and the stress states on contact surfaces better than DDA, and that the results calculated with the multi-body FEM are more consistent with engineering practice than those calculated with DDA method.

A Posteriori Error Estimates for Finite Element Methods for Systems of Nonlinear,Dispersive Equations

The present study regards the numerical approximation of solutions of systems of Korteweg-de Vries type,coupled through their nonlinear terms.In our previous work[9],we constructed conservative and dissipative finite element methods for these systems and presented a priori error estimates for the semidiscrete schemes.In this sequel,we present a posteriori error estimates for the semidiscrete and fully discrete approximations introduced in[9].The key tool employed to effect our analysis is the dispersive reconstruction devel-oped by Karakashian and Makridakis[20]for related discontinuous Galerkin methods.We conclude by providing a set of numerical experiments designed to validate the a posteriori theory and explore the effectivity of the resulting error indicators.

A Novel Staggered Semi-implicit Space-Time Discontinuous Galerkin Method for the Incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations

A new high-order accurate staggered semi-implicit space-time discontinuous Galerkin(DG)method is presented for the simulation of viscous incompressible flows on unstructured triangular grids in two space dimensions.The staggered DG scheme defines the discrete pressure on the primal triangular mesh,while the discrete velocity is defined on a staggered edge-based dual quadrilateral mesh.In this paper,a new pair of equal-order-interpolation velocity-pressure finite elements is proposed.On the primary triangular mesh(the pressure elements),the basis functions are piecewise polynomials of degree N and are allowed to jump on the boundaries of each triangle.On the dual mesh instead(the velocity elements),the basis functions consist in the union of piecewise polynomials of degree N on the two subtriangles that compose each quadrilateral and are allowed to jump only on the dual element boundaries,while they are continuous inside.In other words,the basis functions on the dual mesh arc built by continuous finite elements on the subtriangles.This choice allows the construction of an efficient,quadrature-free and memory saving algorithm.In our coupled space-time pressure correction formulation for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations,the arbitrary high order of accuracy in time is achieved through tire use of time-dependent test and basis functions,in combination with simple and efficient Picard iterations.Several numerical tests on classical benchmarks confirm that the proposed method outperforms existing staggered semi-implicit space-time DG schemes,not only from a computer memory point of view,but also concerning the computational time.

DISCONTINUOUS GALERKIN FINITE ELEMENT METHOD FOR A FORWARD-BACKWARD HEAT EQUATION

A space-time finite element method,discontinuous in time but continuous in space,is studied to solve the nonlinear forward-backward heat equation.A linearized technique is introduced in order to obtain the error estimates of the approximate solutions.And the numerical simulations are given.