Alexey Y. Chernyshenko

Alexey Y. Chernyshenko, Maxim A. Olshanskii

The paper develops a finite element method for partial differential equations posed on hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^N$, $N=2,3$. The method uses traces of bulk finite element functions on a surface embedded in a volumetric domain. The bulk finite element space is defined on an octree grid which is locally refined or coarsened depending on error indicators and estimated values of the surface curvatures. The cartesian structure of the bulk mesh leads to easy and efficient adaptation process, while the trace finite element method makes fitting the mesh to the surface unnecessary. The number of degrees of freedom involved in computations is consistent with the two-dimension nature of surface PDEs. No parametrization of the surface is required; it can be given implicitly by a level set function. In practice, a variant of the marching cubes method is used to recover the surface with the second order accuracy. We prove the optimal order of accuracy for the trace finite element method in $H^1$ and $L^2$ surface norms for a problem with smooth solution and quasi-uniform mesh refinement. Experiments with less regular problems demonstrate optimal convergence with respect to the number of degrees of freedom, if grid adaptation is based on an appropriate error indicator. The paper shows results of numerical experiments for a variety of geometries and problems, including advection-diffusion equations on surfaces. Analysis and numerical results of the paper suggest that combination of cartesian adaptive meshes and the unfitted (trace) finite elements provide simple, efficient, and reliable tool for numerical treatment of PDEs posed on surfaces.

Alexey Y. Chernyshenko, Maxim A. Olshanskii, Yuri V. Vassilevski

The paper develops a hybrid method for solving a system of advection--diffusion equations in a bulk domain coupled to advection--diffusion equations on an embedded surface. A monotone nonlinear finite volume method for equations posed in the bulk is combined with a trace finite element method for equations posed on the surface. In our approach, the surface is not fitted by the mesh and is allowed to cut through the background mesh in an arbitrary way. Moreover, a triangulation of the surface into regular shaped elements is not required. The background mesh is an octree grid with cubic cells. As an example of an application, we consider the modeling of contaminant transport in fractured porous media. One standard model leads to a coupled system of advection--diffusion equations in a bulk (matrix) and along a surface (fracture). A series of numerical experiments with both steady and unsteady problems and different embedded geometries illustrate the numerical properties of the hybrid approach. The method demonstrates great flexibility in handling curvilinear or branching lower dimensional embedded structures.

Alexey Y. Chernyshenko, Maxim A. Olshanskii

The paper studies a method for solving elliptic partial differential equations posed on hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^N$, $N=2,3$. The method builds upon the formulation introduced in Bertalmio et al., J. Comput. Phys., 174 (2001), 759--780., where a surface equation is extended to a neighborhood of the surface. The resulting degenerate PDE is then solved in one dimension higher, but can be solved on a mesh that is unaligned to the surface. We introduce another extended formulation, which leads to uniformly elliptic (non-degenerate) equations in a bulk domain containing the surface. We apply a finite element method to solve this extended PDE and prove the convergence of finite element solutions restricted to the surface to the solution of the original surface problem. Several numerical examples illustrate the properties of the method.