Applications of the pseudo residual-free bubbles to the stabilization of convection-diffusion problems (Q1299281)

For solving 2D convection-dominated elliptic problems, the authors first review the streamline-diffusion method which elementwise contains a stabilization parameter the choice of which is theoretically unsatisfactory. A way to determine these parameters is based on the residual-free bubble functions, another method also reviewed in this paper. This latter method means solving the original differential equation - but with constant right-hand side, on every element. For the case of dominating convection this approach directly leads to a determination of the stabilization parameters; what remains unclear is a theoretically based and practically handsome choice of the stabilization parameters in the intermediate range of about equally strong convection and diffusion. In the rest of the paper, the authors approximate the residual-free bubble problems by a one-parameter optimization problem which they solve exactly (this is defining the pseudo residual-free bubble referred to in the title). A numerical example concludes the paper where the differences between the streamline-diffusion method and the proposed approach turn out to be rather small.