Eugenio Aulisa

Eugenio Aulisa, Lidia Bloshanskaya, Yalchin Efendiev et al.

In this work we propose upscaling method for nonlinear Forchheimer flow in highly heterogeneous porous media. The generalized Forchheimer law is considered for incompressible and slightly-compressible single-phase flows. We use recently developed analytical results Aulisa et al. (2009) and write the resulting system in terms of a degenerate nonlinear flow equation for the pressure with the nonlinearity that depends on the pressure gradient. The coarse scale parameters for the steady state problem are determined so that the volumetric average of velocity of the flow in the domain on fine scale and on coarse scale are close enough. A flow-based coarsening approach is used, where the equivalent permeability tensor is first evaluated following the streamline of the existing linear cases, and successively modified in order to take into account the nonlinear effects. Compared to previous works Durlofsky and Karimi-Fard (2009) and Peszynska et al. (2009), our approach relies on recent analytical results of Aulisa et al. (2009) and combines it with rigorous mathematical upscaling theory for monotone operators. The developed upscaling algorithm for nonlinear steady state problems is effectively used for variety of heterogeneities in the domain of computation. Direct numerical computations for average velocity and productivity index justify the usage of the coarse scale parameters obtained for the special steady state case in the fully transient problem. Analytical upscaling formulas in stratified domain are obtained for the nonlinear case. They correlate with high accuracy with numerical results.

Eugenio Aulisa, Simone Bna, Giorgio Bornia

In this paper we study a monolithic Newton-Krylov solver with exact Jacobian for the solution of incompressible FSI problems. A main focus of this work is on the use of geometric multigrid preconditioners with modified Richardson smoothers preconditioned by an additive Schwarz algorithm. The definition of the subdomains in the Schwarz smoother is driven by the natural splitting between fluid and solid. The monolithic approach guarantees the automatic satisfaction of the stress balance and the kinematic conditions across the fluid-solid interface. The enforcement of the incompressibility conditions both for the fluid and for the solid parts is taken care of by using inf-sup stable finite element pairs without stabilization terms. A suitable Arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian (ALE) operator is chosen in order to avoid mesh entanglement while solving for large displacements of the moving fluid domain. Numerical results of two and three-dimensional benchmark tests with Newtonian fluids and nonlinear hyperelastic solids show a robust performance of our fully incompressible solver especially for the more challenging direct-to-steady-state problems.

Eugenio Aulisa, Giacomo Capodaglio, Guoyi Ke

We present a novel approach for the construction of basis functions to be employed in selective or adaptive h-refined finite element applications with arbitrary-level hanging node configurations. Our analysis is not restricted to $1$-irregular meshes, as it is usually done in the literature, allowing our results to be applicable to a broader class of local refinement strategies. The proposed method does not require the solution of any linear system to obtain the constraints necessary to enforce continuity of the basis functions and it can be easily implemented. A mathematical analysis is carried out to prove that the proposed basis functions are continuous and linearly independent. Finite element spaces are then defined as the spanning sets of such functions, and the implementation of a multigrid algorithm built on these spaces is discussed. A spectral analysis of the multigrid algorithm highlights superior convergence properties of the proposed method over existing strategies based on a local smoothing procedure. Finally, linear and nonlinear numerical examples are tested to show the robustness and versatility of the multigrid algorithm.

Sara Calandrini, Eugenio Aulisa

Venous valves are bicuspidal valves that ensure that blood in veins only flows back to the heart. To prevent retrograde blood flow, the two intraluminal leaflets meet in the center of the vein and occlude the vessel. In fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulations of venous valves, the large structural displacements may lead to mesh deteriorations and entanglements, causing instabilities of the solver and, consequently, the numerical solution to diverge. In this paper, we propose an Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) scheme for FSI simulations designed to solve these instabilities. A monolithic formulation for the FSI problem is considered and, due to the complexity of the operators, the exact Jacobian matrix is evaluated using automatic differentiation. The method relies on the introduction of a staggered in time velocity %in the discretization scheme to improve stability, and on fictitious springs to model the contact force of the valve leaflets. Since the large structural displacements may compromise the quality of the fluid mesh as well, a smoother fluid displacement, obtained with the introduction of a scaling factor that measures the distance of a fluid element from the valve leaflet tip, guarantees that there are no mesh entanglements in the fluid domain. To further improve stability, a Streamline Upwind Petrov Galerkin (SUPG) method is employed. The proposed ALE scheme is applied to a 2D model of a venous valve. The presented simulations show that the proposed method deals well with the large structural displacements of the problem, allowing a reconstruction of the valve behavior in both the opening and closing phase.

Eugenio Aulisa, Giorgio Bornia, Sara Calandrini et al.

In this paper we study convergence estimates for a multigrid algorithm with smoothers of successive subspace correction (SSC) type, applied to symmetric elliptic PDEs. First, we revisit a general convergence analysis on a class of multigrid algorithms in a fairly general setting, where no regularity assumptions are made on the solution. In this framework, we are able to explicitly highlight the dependence of the multigrid error bound on the number of smoothing steps. For the case of no regularity assumptions, this represents a new addition to the existing theory. Then, we analyze successive subspace correction smoothing schemes for a set of uniform and local refinement applications with either nested or non-nested overlapping subdomains. For these applications, we explicitly derive bounds for the multigrid error, and identify sufficient conditions for these bounds to be independent of the number of multigrid levels. For the local refinement applications, finite element grids with arbitrary hanging nodes configurations are considered. The analysis of these smoothing schemes is cast within the far-reaching multiplicative Schwarz framework.