Jaime Mora

Ali Vaziri Astaneh, Federico Fuentes, Jaime Mora et al.

This work represents the first endeavor in using ultraweak formulations to implement high-order polygonal finite element methods via the discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin (DPG) methodology. Ultraweak variational formulations are nonstandard in that all the weight of the derivatives lies in the test space, while most of the trial space can be chosen as copies of $L^2$-discretizations that have no need to be continuous across adjacent elements. Additionally, the test spaces are broken along the mesh interfaces. This allows one to construct conforming polygonal finite element methods, termed here as PolyDPG methods, by defining most spaces by restriction of a bounding triangle or box to the polygonal element. The only variables that require nontrivial compatibility across elements are the so-called interface or skeleton variables, which can be defined directly on the element boundaries. Unlike other high-order polygonal methods, PolyDPG methods do not require ad hoc stabilization terms thanks to the crafted stability of the DPG methodology. A proof of convergence of the form $h^p$ is provided and corroborated through several illustrative numerical examples. These include polygonal meshes with $n$-sided convex elements and with highly distorted concave elements, as well as the modeling of discontinuous material properties along an arbitrary interface that cuts a uniform grid. Since PolyDPG methods have a natural a posteriori error estimator a polygonal adaptive strategy is developed and compared to standard adaptivity schemes based on constrained hanging nodes. This work is also accompanied by an open-source $\texttt{PolyDPG}$ software supporting polygonal and conventional elements.

Jaime Mora, Leszek Demkowicz

Numerical integration of the stiffness matrix in higher order finite element (FE) methods is recognized as one of the heaviest computational tasks in a FE solver. The problem becomes even more relevant when computing the Gram matrix in the algorithm of the Discontinuous Petrov Galerkin (DPG) FE methodology. Making use of 3D tensor-product shape functions, and the concept of sum factorization, known from standard high order FE and spectral methods, here we take advantage of this idea for the entire exact sequence of FE spaces defined on the hexahedron. The key piece to the presented algorithms is the exact sequence for the one-dimensional element, and use of hierarchical shape functions. Consistent with existing results, the presented algorithms for the integration of $H^1$, $H(\text{curl})$, $H(\text{div})$, and $L^2$ inner products, have the $O(p^7)$ computational complexity. Additionally, a modified version of the algorithms is proposed when the element map can be simplified, resulting in the reduced $O(p^6)$ complexity. Use of Legendre polynomials for shape functions is critical in this implementation. Computational experiments performed with $H^1$, $H(\text{div})$ and $H(\text{curl})$ test shape functions show good correspondence with the expected rates.