James Cheung

James Cheung, Mauro Perego, Pavel Bochev et al.

Meshing of geometric domains having curved boundaries by affine simplices produces a polytopial approximation of those domains. The resulting error in the representation of the domain limits the accuracy of finite element methods based on such meshes. On the other hand, the simplicity of affine meshes makes them a desirable modeling tool in many applications. In this paper, we develop and analyze higher-order accurate finite element methods that remain stable and optimally accurate on polytopial approximations of domains with smooth boundaries. This is achieved by constraining a judiciously chosen extension of the finite element solution on the polytopial domain to weakly match the prescribed boundary condition on the true geometric boundary. We provide numerical examples that highlight key properties of the new method and that illustrate the optimal $H^1$ and $L^2$-norm convergence rates.

Pavel Bochev, James Cheung, Max Gunzburger et al.

In this paper, we present a new numerical method for determining the numerical solution of interface problems to optimal accuracy with respect to the polynomial order of the Lagrangian finite element space on polytopial meshes. We introduce the notion of a virtual interface, and on this virtual interface we enforce that "extended" interface conditions are satisfied in the sense of a Dirichlet--Neumann coupling. The virtual interface framework serves to bypass geometric variational crimes incurred by the classical finite element method. Further, this approach does not require that the geometric interfaces are spatially matching. Our analysis indicates that this approach is well--posed and optimally convergent in $H^1$. Numerical experiments indicate that optimal $H^1$ and $L^2$ convergence is achieved.

Pavel Bochev, James Cheung, Max Gunzburger et al.

We present a new formulation based on the classical Dirichlet-Neumann formulation for interface coupling problems in linearized elasticity. By using Taylor series expansions, we derive a new set of interface conditions that allow our formulation to pass the linear consistency test. In addition, we propose an iterative method to determine the solution of our formulation. We demonstrate in our numerical results that we may achieve the desired piecewise linear finite element error bounds for both nonoverlapping domain decomposition problems as well as for interface coupling problems where the Lamé parameters of the structures differ.