Fully discrete FEM-BEM method for a class of exterior nonlinear parabolic-elliptic problems in 2D (Q2507726)

Coupling of the nonlinear parabolic equation \[ \frac{\partial u}{\partial t} - \nabla\cdot \mathbf{b}\left(\cdot,u(t),\nabla u(t)\right)=f(t) \] to Laplace equation is considered, the former holding on a plane annular region \(\Omega_P\) while the latter holds on \(\Omega_E\), the unbounded component of the exterior of \(\Omega_P\). A transmission condition on the interface, namely \[ \mathbf{b}(\cdot , u_P(t), \nabla u_P(t))\cdot \mathbf{n}_1) = \frac{\partial u_E}{\partial \mathbf{n}_1}(t), \] does the coupling between the two solution chunks, \(u_P\) and \(u_E\), which allows this problem to model two-dimensional nonlinear quasi-stationary electromagnetic fields. The proposed treatment is to introduce an artificial boundary so that the new coupled problem turns out to be fully linear in the unbounded subdomain. A symmetric procedure is then employed in such a way as to allow polygonal curves as the introduced boundary. Existence and uniqueness for both the continuous and the considered discrete problem is proven, an optimal convergence error estimate being obtained. This latter is shown to still hold for some quadrature approximations used in the FEM discretization. Observe that for time stepping, the backward Euler scheme is the choice.