Lars Diening

Lars Diening, Christian Kreuzer, Endre Süli

We develop the analysis of finite element approximations of implicit power-law-like models for viscous incompressible fluids. The Cauchy stress and the symmetric part of the velocity gradient in the class of models under consideration are related by a, possibly multi--valued, maximal monotone $r$-graph, with $1<r<\infty$. Using a variety of weak compactness techniques, including Chacon's biting lemma and Young measures, we show that a subsequence of the sequence of finite element solutions converges to a weak solution of the problem as the finite element discretization parameter $h$ tends to 0. A key new technical tool in our analysis is a finite element counterpart of the Acerbi--Fusco Lipschitz truncation of Sobolev functions.

Stephan Dahlke, Lars Diening, Christoph Hartmann et al.

In this paper, we study the regularity of solutions to the $p$-Poisson equation for all $1<p<\infty$. In particular, we are interested in smoothness estimates in the adaptivity scale $ B^σ_τ(L_τ(Ω))$, $1/τ= σ/d+1/p$, of Besov spaces. The regularity in this scale determines the order of approximation that can be achieved by adaptive and other nonlinear approximation methods. It turns out that, especially for solutions to $p$-Poisson equations with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions on bounded polygonal domains, the Besov regularity is significantly higher than the Sobolev regularity which justifies the use of adaptive algorithms. This type of results is obtained by combining local Hölder with global Sobolev estimates. In particular, we prove that intersections of locally weighted Hölder spaces and Sobolev spaces can be continuously embedded into the specific scale of Besov spaces we are interested in. The proof of this embedding result is based on wavelet characterizations of Besov spaces.

Sören Bartels, Lars Diening, Ricardo H. Nochetto

A popular and efficient discretization of evolutions involving the singular $p$-Laplace operator is based on a factorization of the differential operator into a linear part which is treated implicitly and a regularized singular factor which is treated explicitly. It is shown that an unconditional energy stability property for this semi-implicit time stepping strategy holds. Related error estimates depend critically on a required regularization parameter. Numerical experiments reveal reduced experimental convergence rates for smaller regularization parameters and thereby confirm that this dependence cannot be avoided in general.

Lars Diening, Christian Kreuzer, Sebastian Schwarzacher

The convex hull property is the natural generalization of maximum principles from scalar to vector valued functions. Maximum principles for finite element approximations are often crucial for the preservation of qualitative properties of the respective physical model. In this work we develop a convex hull property for $¶_1$ conforming finite elements on simplicial non-obtuse meshes. The proof does not resort to linear structures of partial differential equations but directly addresses properties of the minimiser of a convex energy functional. Therefore, the result holds for very general nonlinear partial differential equations including e.g. the $p$-Laplacian and the mean curvature problem. In the case of scalar equations the introduce techniques can be used to prove standard discrete maximum principles for nonlinear problems. We conclude by proving a strong discrete convex hull property on strictly acute triangulations.

Luigi C. Berselli, Dominic Breit, Lars Diening

In this paper we study the finite element approximation of systems of $p(\cdot)$-Stokes type, where $p(\cdot)$ is a (non constant) given function of the space variables. We derive --in some cases optimal-- error estimates for finite element approximation of the velocity and of the pressure, in a suitable functional setting.

Lars Diening, Christian Kreuzer, Rob Stevenson

In this paper, we prove that the standard adaptive finite element method with a (modified) `maximum marking strategy' is `instance optimal' for the `total error', being the sum of the energy error and the oscillation. This result will be derived in the model setting of Poisson's equation on a polygon, linear finite elements, and conforming triangulations created by newest vertex bisection.