Zachary J. Grant

Sidafa Conde, Sigal Gottlieb, Zachary J. Grant et al.

When evolving in time the solution of a hyperbolic partial differential equation, it is often desirable to use high order strong stability preserving (SSP) time discretizations. These time discretizations preserve the monotonicity properties satisfied by the spatial discretization when coupled with the first order forward Euler, under a certain time-step restriction. While the allowable time-step depends on both the spatial and temporal discretizations, the contribution of the temporal discretization can be isolated by taking the ratio of the allowable time-step of the high order method to the forward Euler time-step. This ratio is called the strong stability coefficient. The search for high order strong stability time-stepping methods with high order and large allowable time-step had been an active area of research. It is known that implicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods exist only up to sixth order. However, if we restrict ourselves to solving only linear autonomous problems, the order conditions simplify and we can find implicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods of any linear order. In the current work we aim to find very high linear order implicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods that are optimal in terms of allowable time-step. Next, we formulate an optimization problem for implicit-explicit (IMEX) SSP Runge-Kutta methods and find implicit methods with large linear stability regions that pair with known explicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods of orders plin=3,4,6 as well as optimized IMEX SSP Runge-Kutta pairs that have high linear order and nonlinear orders p=2,3,4. These methods are then tested on sample problems to verify order of convergence and to demonstrate the sharpness of the SSP coefficient and the typical behavior of these methods on test problems.

Andrew J. Christieb, Sigal Gottlieb, Zachary J. Grant et al.

High order strong stability preserving (SSP) time discretizations are advantageous for use with spatial discretizations with nonlinear stability properties for the solution of hyperbolic PDEs. The search for high order strong stability time-stepping methods with large allowable strong stability time-step has been an active area of research over the last two decades. Recently, multiderivative time-stepping methods have been implemented with hyperbolic PDEs. In this work we describe sufficient conditions for a two-derivative multistage method to be SSP, and find some optimal SSP multistage two-derivative methods. While explicit SSP Runge--Kutta methods exist only up to fourth order, we show that this order barrier is broken for explicit multi-stage two-derivative methods by designing a three stage fifth order SSP method. These methods are tested on simple scalar PDEs to verify the order of convergence, and demonstrate the need for the SSP condition and the sharpness of the SSP time-step in many cases.

Sigal Gottlieb, Zachary J. Grant, Leah Isherwood

Strong stability preserving (SSP) Runge-Kutta methods are often desired when evolving in time problems that have two components that have very different time scales. Where the SSP property is needed, it has been shown that implicit and implicit-explicit methods have very restrictive time-steps and are therefore not efficient. For this reason, SSP integrating factor methods may offer an attractive alternative to traditional time-stepping methods for problems with a linear component that is stiff and a nonlinear component that is not. However, the strong stability properties of integrating factor Runge-Kutta methods have not been established. In this work we show that it is possible to define explicit integrating factor Runge-Kutta methods that preserve the desired strong stability properties satisfied by each of the two components when coupled with forward Euler time-stepping, or even given weaker conditions. We define sufficient conditions for an explicit integrating factor Runge--Kutta method to be SSP, namely that they are based on explicit SSP Runge--Kutta methods with non-decreasing abscissas. We find such methods of up to fourth order and up to ten stages, analyze their SSP coefficients, and prove their optimality in a few cases. We test these methods to demonstrate their convergence and to show that the SSP time-step predicted by the theory is generally sharp, and that the non-decreasing abscissa condition is needed in our test cases. Finally, we show that on typical total variation diminishing linear and nonlinear test-cases our new explicit SSP integrating factor Runge-Kutta methods out-perform the corresponding explicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods, implicit-explicit SSP Runge--Kutta methods, and some well-known exponential time differencing methods.

John Driscoll, Sigal Gottlieb, Zachary J. Grant et al.

A mixed accuracy framework for Runge--Kutta methods presented in [Grant, JSC 2022] has been shown to speed up the computation in diagonally implicit Runge--Kutta (DIRK) methods by using less expensive low accuracy approaches for the implicit stages. This theory included both smooth and nonsmooth perturbations, and subsequent work focused primarily on the case of nonsmooth perturbations that arise from mixed precision simulations. In this work the focus is on smooth perturbations that arise from using less accurate models or under-resolved iterative solvers to simplify the implicit computations. We develop an accuracy and stability analysis based on the framework in [Grant, JSC 2022] to design methods that strategically replace the original operator by a lower accuracy operator to reduce computational cost while mitigating the effect of the perturbations. In particular, we focus on designing novel methods that are high order for smooth perturbations that satisfy additional local consistency conditions. Finally, we verify the performance of the novel perturbed DIRK methods designed in this work and numerically study the impact of different types of smooth perturbations on the accuracy and stability of the methods.

John Driscoll, Sigal Gottlieb, Zachary J. Grant et al.

A mixed accuracy framework for Runge--Kutta methods presented in Grant [JSC 2022] and applied to diagonally implicit Runge--Kutta (DIRK) methods can significantly speed up the computation by replacing the implicit solver by less expensive low accuracy approaches such as lower precision computation of the implicit solve, under-resolved iterative solvers, or simpler, less accurate models for the implicit stages. Understanding the effect of the perturbation errors introduced by the low accuracy computations enables the design of stable and accurate mixed accuracy DIRK methods where the errors from the low-accuracy computation are damped out by multiplication by \dt at multiple points in the simulation, resulting in a more accurate simulation than if low-accuracy was used for all computation. To improve upon this, explicit corrections were previously proposed and analyzed for accuracy, and their performance was tested in related work. Explicit corrections work well when the time-step is sufficiently small, but may introduce instabilities when the time-step is larger. In this work, the stability of the mixed accuracy approach is carefully studied, and used to design novel stabilized correction approaches.

Leah Isherwood, Zachary J. Grant, Sigal Gottlieb

Problems that feature significantly different time scales, where the stiff time-step restriction comes from a linear component, implicit-explicit (IMEX) methods alleviate this restriction if the concern is linear stability. However, where the SSP property is needed, IMEX SSP Runge-Kutta (SSP-IMEX) methods have very restrictive time-steps. An alternative to SSP-IMEX schemes is to adopt an integrating factor approach to handle the linear component exactly and step the transformed problem forward using some time-evolution method. The strong stability properties of integrating factor Runge--Kutta methods were previously established, where it was shown that it is possible to define explicit integrating factor Runge-Kutta methods that preserve strong stability properties satisfied by each of the two components when coupled with forward Euler time-stepping. It was proved that the solution will be SSP if the transformed problem is stepped forward with an explicit SSP Runge-Kutta method that has non-decreasing abscissas. However, explicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods have an order barrier of p=4, and sometimes higher order is desired. In this work we consider explicit SSP two-step Runge--Kutta integrating factor methods to raise the order. We show that strong stability is ensured if the two-step Runge-Kutta method used to evolve the transformed problem is SSP and has non-decreasing abscissas. We find such methods up to eighth order and present their SSP coefficients. Adding a step allows us to break the fourth order barrier on explicit SSP Runge-Kutta methods; furthermore, our explicit SSP two-step Runge--Kutta methods with non-decreasing abscissas typically have larger SSP coefficients than the corresponding one-step methods.

Leah Isherwood, Zachary J. Grant, Sigal Gottlieb

Strong stability preserving (SSP) Runge-Kutta methods are desirable when evolving in time problems that have discontinuities or sharp gradients and require nonlinear non-inner-product stability properties to be satisfied. Unlike the case for L2 linear stability, implicit methods do not significantly alleviate the time-step restriction when the SSP property is needed. For this reason, when handling problems with a linear component that is stiff and a nonlinear component that is not, SSP integrating factor Runge--Kutta methods may offer an attractive alternative to traditional time-stepping methods. The strong stability properties of integrating factor Runge--Kutta methods where the transformed problem is evolved with an explicit SSP Runge--Kutta method with non-decreasing abscissas was recently established. In this work, we consider the use of downwinded spatial operators to preserve the strong stability properties of integrating factor Runge--Kutta methods where the Runge--Kutta method has some decreasing abscissas. We present the SSP theory for this approach and present numerical evidence to show that such an approach is feasible and performs as expected. However, we also show that in some cases the integrating factor approach with explicit SSP Runge--Kutta methods with non-decreasing abscissas performs nearly as well, if not better, than with explicit SSP Runge--Kutta methods with downwinding. In conclusion, while the downwinding approach can be rigorously shown to guarantee the SSP property for a larger time-step, in practice using the integrating factor approach by including downwinding as needed with optimal explicit SSP Runge--Kutta methods does not necessarily provide significant benefit over using explicit SSP Runge--Kutta methods with non-decreasing abscissas.