Marc Schmidlin

Helmut Harbrecht, Michael Peters, Marc Schmidlin

In this article, we consider elliptic diffusion problems with an anisotropic random diffusion coefficient. We model the notable direction in terms of a random vector field and derive regularity results for the solution's dependence on the random parameter. It turns out that the decay of the vector field's Karhunen-Loeve expansion entirely determines this regularity. The obtained results allow for sophisticated quadrature methods, such as the quasi-Monte Carlo method or the anisotropic sparse grid quadrature, in order to approximate quantities of interest, like the solution's mean or the variance. Numerical examples in three spatial dimensions are provided to supplement the presented theory.

Helmut Harbrecht, Marc Schmidlin

We consider elliptic diffusion problems with a random anisotropic diffusion coefficient, where, in a notable direction given by a random vector field, the diffusion strength differs from the diffusion strength perpendicular to this notable direction. The Karhunen-Loève expansion then yields a parametrisation of the random vector field and, therefore, also of the solution of the elliptic diffusion problem. We show that, given regularity of the elliptic diffusion problem, the decay of the Karhunen-Loève expansion entirely determines the regularity of the solution's dependence on the random parameter, also when considering this higher spatial regularity. This result then implies that multilevel collocation and multilevel quadrature methods may be used to lessen the computation complexity when approximating quantities of interest, like the solution's mean or its second moment, while still yielding the expected rates of convergence. Numerical examples in three spatial dimensions are provided to validate the presented theory.