Time and space meshes adaptivity for the resolution of a semi-linear heat equation

The aim of this work is to highlight that the adaptivity of the time step when combined with the adaptivity of the spectral mesh is optimal for a semi-linear parabolic equation discretized by an implicit Euler scheme in time and spectral elements method in space. The numerical results confirm the optimality of the order of convergence. The later is similar to the order of the error indicators.

Vertical Discretization for a Nonhydrostatic Atmospheric Model Based on High-Order Spectral Elements

This study addresses the treatment of vertical discretization for a high-order, spectral element model of a nonhydrostatic atmosphere in which the governing equations of the model are separated into horizontal and vertical components by introducing a coordinate transformation, so that one can use different orders and types of approximations in both directions. The vertical terms of the decoupled governing equations are discretized using finite elements based on either Lagrange or basis-spline polynomial functions in the sigma coordinate, while maintaining the high-order spectral elements for the discretization of the horizontal terms. This leads to the fact that the high-order model of spectral elements with a nonuniform grid, interpolated within an element, can be easily accommodated with existing physical parameterizations. Idealized tests are performed to compare the accuracy and efficiency of the vertical discretization methods, in addition to the central finite differences, with those of the standard high-order spectral element approach. Our results show, through all the test cases, that the finite element with the cubic basis-spline function is more accurate than the other vertical discretization methods at moderate computational cost. Furthermore, grid dependency studies in the tests with and without orography indicate that the convergence rate of the vertical discretization methods is lower than the expected level of discretization accuracy, especially in the Schär mountain test, which yields approximately first-order convergence.

On the convergence analysis of a time dependent elliptic equation with discontinuous coefficients

In this paper, we consider a heat equation with diffusion coefficient that varies depending on the heterogeneity of the domain. We propose a spectral elements discretization of this problem with the mortar domain decomposition method on the space variable and Euler’s implicit scheme with respect to the time. The convergence analysis and an optimal error estimates are proved.