David A. Kopriva

Gregor J. Gassner, Andrew R. Winters, Florian J. Hindenlang et al.

We show how to modify the original Bassi and Rebay scheme (BR1) [F. Bassi and S. Rebay, A High Order Accurate Discontinuous Finite Element Method for the Numerical Solution of the Compressible Navier-Stokes Equations, Journal of Computational Physics, 131:267--279, 1997] to get a provably stable discontinuous Galerkin collocation spectral element method (DGSEM) with Gauss-Lobatto (GL) nodes for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations (NSE) on three dimensional curvilinear meshes. Specifically, we show that the BR1 scheme can be provably stable if the metric identities are discretely satisfied, a two-point average for the metric terms is used for the contravariant fluxes in the volume, an entropy conserving split form is used for the advective volume integrals, the auxiliary gradients for the viscous terms are computed from gradients of entropy variables, and the BR1 scheme is used for the interface fluxes. Our analysis shows that even with three dimensional curvilinear grids, the BR1 fluxes do not add artificial dissipation at the interior element faces. Thus, the BR1 interface fluxes preserve the stability of the discretization of the advection terms and we get either energy stability or entropy-stability for the linear or nonlinear compressible NSE, respectively.

Niklas Wintermeyer, Andrew R. Winters, Gregor J. Gassner et al.

We design an arbitrary high-order accurate nodal discontinuous Galerkin spectral element approximation for the nonlinear two dimensional shallow water equations with non-constant, possibly discontinuous, bathymetry on unstructured, possibly curved, quadrilateral meshes. The scheme is derived from an equivalent flux differencing formulation of the split form of the equations. We prove that this discretisation exactly preserves the local mass and momentum. Furthermore, combined with a special numerical interface flux function, the method exactly preserves the mathematical entropy, which is the total energy for the shallow water equations. By adding a specific form of interface dissipation to the baseline entropy conserving scheme we create a provably entropy stable scheme. That is, the numerical scheme discretely satisfies the second law of thermodynamics. Finally, with a particular discretisation of the bathymetry source term we prove that the numerical approximation is well-balanced. We provide numerical examples that verify the theoretical findings and furthermore provide an application of the scheme for a partial break of a curved dam test problem.

Juan Manzanero, Gonzalo Rubio, Esteban Ferrer et al.

We analyse instabilities due to aliasing errors when solving one dimensional non-constant advection speed equations and discuss means to alleviate these types of errors when using high order discontinuous Galerkin (DG) schemes. First, we compare analytical bounds for the continuous and discrete version of the PDEs. Whilst traditional $L^2$ norm energy bounds applied to the discrete PDE do not always predict the physical behaviour of the continuous version of the equation, more strict elliptic norm bounds correctly bound the behaviour of the continuous PDE. Having derived consistent bounds, we analyse the effectiveness of two stabilising techniques: over-integration and split form variations (conservative, non-conservative and skew-symmetric). Whilst the former is shown to not alleviate aliasing in general, the latter ensures an aliasing-free solution if the splitting form of the discrete PDE is consistent with the continuous equation. The success of split form de-aliasing is restricted to DG schemes with the summation-by-parts simultaneous-approximation-term (SBP-SAT) properties (e.g. DG with Gauss-Lobatto points). Numerical experiments are included to illustrate the theoretical findings.

Juan Manzanero, Gonzalo Rubio, David A. Kopriva et al.

We present a nodal Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) scheme for the Cahn-Hilliard equation that satisfies the summation-by-parts simultaneous-approximation-term (SBP-SAT) property. The latter permits us to show that the discrete free-energy is bounded, and as a result, the scheme is provably stable. The scheme and the stability proof are presented for general curvilinear three-dimensional hexahedral meshes. We use the Bassi-Rebay 1 (BR1) scheme to compute interface fluxes, and an IMplicit-EXplicit (IMEX) scheme to integrate in time. Lastly, we test the theoretical findings numerically and present examples for two and three-dimensional problems.

David A. Kopriva

We introduce a polynomial spectral calculus that follows from the summation by parts property of the Legendre-Gauss-Lobatto quadrature. We use the calculus to simplify the analysis of two multidimensional discontinuous Galerkin spectral element approximations.

Daniel Bach, Andrés Rueda-Ramírez, David A. Kopriva et al.

Free-stream preservation is an essential property for numerical solvers on curvilinear grids. Key to this property is that the metric terms of the curvilinear mapping satisfy discrete metric identities, i.e., have zero divergence. Divergence-free metric terms are furthermore essential for entropy stability on curvilinear grids. We present a new way to compute the metric terms for discontinuous Galerkin spectral element methods (DGSEMs) that guarantees they are divergence-free. Our proposed mimetic approach uses projections that fit within the de Rham Cohomology.

David A. Kopriva

We perform stability analyses for discontinuous Galerkin spectral element approximations of linear variable coefficient hyperbolic systems in three dimensional domains with curved elements. Although high order, the precision of the quadratures used are typically too low with respect to polynomial order associated with their arguments, which introduces aliasing errors that can destabilize an approximation, especially when the solution is underresolved. We show that using a larger number of points in the volume quadrature, often called "overintegration", can eliminate the aliasing term associated with the volume, but introduces new aliasing errors at the surfaces that can destabilize the solution. Increased quadrature precision on both the volume and surface terms, on the other hand, leads to a stable approximation. The results support the findings of Mengaldo et al. [Dealiasing techniques for high-order spectral element methods on regular and irregular grids. Journal of Computational Physics, 299:56 -- 81, 2015] who found that fully consistent integration was more robust for the solution of compressible flows than the volume only version.

Gregor J. Gassner, Andrew R. Winters, David A. Kopriva

Fisher and Carpenter (\textit{High-order entropy stable finite difference schemes for non-linear conservation laws: Finite domains, Journal of Computational Physics, 252:518--557, 2013}) found a remarkable equivalence of general diagonal norm high-order summation-by-parts operators to a subcell based high-order finite volume formulation. This equivalence enables the construction of provably entropy stable schemes by a specific choice of the subcell finite volume flux. We show that besides the construction of entropy stable high order schemes, a careful choice of subcell finite volume fluxes generates split formulations of quadratic or cubic terms. Thus, by changing the subcell finite volume flux to a specific choice, we are able to generate, in a systematic way, all common split forms of the compressible Euler advection terms, such as the Ducros splitting and the Kennedy and Gruber splitting. Although these split forms are not entropy stable, we present a systematic way to prove which of those split forms are at least kinetic energy preserving. With this, we show we construct a unified high-order split form DG framework. We investigate with three dimensional numerical simulations of the inviscid Taylor-Green vortex and show that the new split forms enhance the robustness of high order simulations in comparison to the standard scheme when solving turbulent vortex dominated flows. In fact, we show that for certain test cases, the novel split form discontinuous Galerkin schemes are more robust than the discontinuous Galerkin scheme with over-integration.

David A. Kopriva, Andrew R. Winters, Marvin Bohm et al.

We design a novel provably stable discontinuous Galerkin spectral element (DGSEM) approximation to solve systems of conservation laws on moving domains. To incorporate the motion of the domain, we use an arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian formulation to map the governing equations to a fixed reference domain. The approximation is made stable by a discretization of a skew-symmetric formulation of the problem. We prove that the discrete approximation is stable, conservative and, for constant coefficient problems, maintains the free-stream preservation property. We also provide details on how to add the new skew-symmetric ALE approximation to an existing discontinuous Galerkin spectral element code. Lastly, we provide numerical support of the theoretical results.