Superconvergence of piecewise linear semi-discretizations for parabolic equations with nonuniform triangulations (Q1781128)

The aim of the paper is to study the convergence properties of semi-discrete approximations for the class of time dependent problems \[ \left\{ \begin{matrix} \frac{{\partial u}} {{\partial t}} + Au = g\;\; & {\text{in}}\;\;\left( {0,T} \right] \times \Omega , \hfill \cr u\left( {0,.} \right) = u_0 & {\text{in}}\;\;\;\bar \Omega , \hfill \cr u = 0 & {\text{on}}\;\;\left[ {{\text{0,T}}} \right] \times \partial \Omega , \hfill \cr \end{matrix} \right. \] where \(\Omega \) is a polygonal domain in \(\mathbb{R}^2 \) with boundary \(\partial \Omega \) and \(A\) is the elliptic operator \[ Au = \frac{\partial } {{\partial x}}\left( {a\frac{{\partial u}} {{\partial x}}} \right) - \frac{\partial } {{\partial x}}\left( {b\frac{{\partial u}} {{\partial y}}} \right) - \frac{\partial } {{\partial y}}\left( {b\frac{{\partial u}} {{\partial x}}} \right) - \frac{\partial } {{\partial y}}\left( {c\frac{{\partial u}} {{\partial y}}} \right) + d\frac{{\partial u}} {{\partial x}} + e\frac{{\partial u}} {{\partial y}} + fu, \] where \(a,b,c,d,e\) and \(f\) are coefficient functions that are smooth enough. The spatial discretization is defined using a nonstandard piecewise linear finite element method (FEM). The method studied is based on nonuniform triangulations and the variational formulation of the elliptic problem is defined using a sesquilinear form which can be not strongly coercive. These assumptions are less restrictive then those considered in the literature. The authors are interested in carrying over to the semi-discrete approximation for the solution of time dependent problems considered above recent superconvergence results. Attending to that, in Section 2 the authors define the semi-discrete approximation introducing the nonstandard piecewise linear FEM. In Section 3 for the elliptic equation associated with the problem they present superconvergence results for the nonstandard linear piecewise linear FE approximation. In these results the error estimated is the difference between the interpolation of the solution and the FE approximation. In order to compare the FE approximation with the solution the authors introduce in this section a way how to post-processing the gradient of the solution such that it becomes of higher order accuracy. In order to prove the accuracy of the post-processing procedure some smoothness assumptions on the triangulation are assumed. Using the results presented in Section 4 the authors prove superconvergent upper bounds to the error of the nonstandard semi-discrete piecewise linear FE approximation under the assumptions mentioned before. In Section 5 the semi-discrete approximation studied is related with the semi-discrete approximation defined using a certain finite difference method and so in the language of finite differences the superconvergence results are supraconvergence results. Numerical results illustrating the performance of the methods arc also presented. Finally, the authors remark that following the paper similar results can be obtained for systems of parabolic equations.