Isogeometric Analysis of PDEs and numerical implementation in the Finite Element Library LifeV

The aim of the project is double: to understand the flexibility of the Isogeometric Analysis tools through the solution of some PDEs problems; to test the improvement in the computational time given by a partial loops vectorization at compile-time of the LifeV IGA code. Three different appli- cations have been selected: the potential flow problem around an airfoil profile, the heat equation problem in a bent cylinder and the Laplace problem in a multi-patches geometry representing a blood vessels bifurcation. The geometries used are built through the NURBS package available with the software GeoPDEs. The numerical analysis of the first application is performed with both GeoPDEs and LifeV IGA code. The comparison between different implementations shows that the degrees of freedom loop vectorization at compile-time is able to reduce the matrix assembling time of around 20%. The automatic vectorization at compile-time of the loop on the elements requires too much computational effort without having a reasonable improvement in the running time performances. Unsteady problems and multi-patches geometry have not been tested with LifeV IGA code, but GeoPDEs results show the expected solutions.

A posteriori error estimation for partial differential equations with random input data

Diane Sylvie Guignard

This thesis is devoted to the derivation of error estimates for partial differential equations with random input data, with a focus on a posteriori error estimates which are the basis for adaptive strategies. Such procedures aim at obtaining an approximation of the solution with a given precision while minimizing the computational costs. If several sources of error come into play, it is then necessary to balance them to avoid unnecessary work. We are first interested in problems that contain small uncertainties approximated by finite elements. The use of perturbation techniques is appropriate in this setting since only few terms in the power series expansion of the exact random solution with respect to a parameter characterizing the amount of randomness in the problem are required to obtain an accurate approximation. The goal is then to perform an error analysis for the finite element approximation of the expansion up to a certain order. First, an elliptic model problem with random diffusion coefficient with affine dependence on a vector of independent random variables is studied. We give both a priori and a posteriori error estimates for the first term in the expansion for various norms of the error. The results are then extended to higher order approximations and to other sources of uncertainty, such as boundary conditions or forcing term. Next, the analysis of nonlinear problems in random domains is proposed, considering the one-dimensional viscous Burgers' equation and the more involved incompressible steady-state Navier-Stokes equations. The domain mapping method is used to transform the equations in random domains into equations in a fixed reference domain with random coefficients. We give conditions on the mapping and the input data under which we can prove the well-posedness of the problems and give a posteriori error estimates for the finite element approximation of the first term in the expansion. Finally, we consider the heat equation with random Robin boundary conditions. For this parabolic problem, the time discretization brings an additional source of error that is accounted for in the error analysis. The second part of this work consists in the analysis of a random elliptic diffusion problem that is approximated in the physical space by the finite element method and in the stochastic space by the stochastic collocation method on a sparse grid. Considering a random diffusion coefficient with affine dependence on a vector of independent random variables, we derive a residual-based a posteriori error estimate that controls the two sources of error. The stochastic error estimator is then used to drive an adaptive sparse grid algorithm which aims at alleviating the so-called curse of dimensionality inherent to tensor grids. Several numerical examples are given to illustrate the performance of the adaptive procedure.

EPFL2016

Numerical Methods for First and Second Order Fully Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations

Dimitrios Gourzoulidis

This thesis focuses on the numerical analysis of partial differential equations (PDEs) with an emphasis on first and second-order fully nonlinear PDEs. The main goal is the design of numerical methods to solve a variety of equations such as orthogonal maps, the prescribed Jacobian equation and inequality, the elliptic and parabolic Monge-Ampère equations. For orthogonal map we develop an \emph{operator-splitting/finite element} approach for the numerical solution of the Dirichlet problem. This approach is built on the variational principle, the introduction of an associated flow problem, and a time-stepping splitting algorithm. Moreover, we propose an extension of this method with an \emph{anisotropic mesh adaptation algorithm}. This extension allows us to track singularities of the solution's gradient more accurately. Various numerical experiments demonstrate the accuracy and the robustness of the proposed method for both constant and adaptive mesh. For the prescribed Jacobian equation and the three-dimensional Monge-Ampère equation, we consider a \emph{least-squares/relaxation finite element method} for the numerical solution of the Dirichlet problems. We then introduce a relaxation algorithm that splits the least-square problem, which stems from a reformulation of the original equations, into local nonlinear and variational problems. We develop dedicated solvers for the algebraic problems based on Newton method and we solve the differential problems using mixed low-order finite element method. Overall the least squares approach exhibits appropriate convergence orders in

L^2(\Omega)

and

H^1(\Omega)

error norms for various numerical tests. We also design a \emph{second-order time integration method} for the approximation of a parabolic two-dimensional Monge-Ampère equation. The space discretization of this method is based on low-order finite elements, and the time discretization is achieved by the implicit Crank-Nicolson type scheme. We verify the efficiency of the proposed method on time-dependent and stationary problems. The results of numerical experiments show that the method achieves nearly optimal orders for the

L^2(\Omega)

and

H^1(\Omega)

error norms when smooth solutions are approximated. Finally, we present an adaptive mesh refinement algorithm for the elliptic Monge-Ampere equation based on the residual error estimate. The robustness of the proposed algorithm is verified using various test cases and two different solvers which are inspired by the two previous proposed numerical methods.

EPFL2021