Adaptive FEM for reaction-diffusion equations (Q1379046)

In the first part of the paper the author shortly presents some methods for solving mixed systems of nonlinear parabolic and elliptic differential equations. Especially a short comparison between the adaptive method of lines and Rothe's approach is presented. Then the author describes the time integrator and the finite element method (FEM) derived from the time-space discretization sequence. The main object of the paper is to compute a well-fitted spatial mesh at any time. Due to conditions mentioned in the paper one-step methods of Rosenbrock type are relevant here. A simple procedure to reduce CPU time is described. It is connected with a modification of choosing a step size control. The achieved reduction is about 20\%, but with no addition programming cost. In section 4 one fundamental question of the adaptive Rothe method is examined. The problem is how to choose \(G^0_{n+1}\), the starting grid for the new solution. Some strategy, called ``trimming-tree'', is described, which in some cases may be advantageous. In section 5 the above-mentioned method is applied to solve a solid-solid combustion problem, and for comparison a Rosenbrock method of order three is employed. Data from computations are presented. (The work is done on IBM RS6000 computer.) A comparison of two different strategies for choosing \(G^0_{n+1}\), namely the coarse-to-fine strategy with a time-fixed coarse grid, and the trimming-tree strategy, is discussed. It shows that, at least in this case, the trimming-tree strategy performs faster.