Numerical analysis of interface hybrid difference methods for elliptic interface equations (Q2175823)

Interface problems occur in many applications such as material science and fluid dynamics, in the case of two or more materials or fluids with different conductivities or densities. The authors propose interface hybrid difference methods for solving the elliptic interface \[ -\nabla \cdot (\kappa \nabla u) = f \; \text{in}\; \Omega, \qquad u = 0 \; \text{on} \;\partial \Omega, \] together with the jump conditions at the interface \[ [[u]]_\Gamma = [[\kappa \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu} ]]_\Gamma = 0. \] The hybrid difference method is composed of the finite difference approximation of the elliptic problem within cells and of the intercell finite difference on edges of cells. The method solves the elliptic interface problems on body-fitted meshes. The cells away from the interface are regular rectangles and the cells adjacent to the interface are trapezoids. The finite differences are obtained by one-dimensional Lagrange interpolating polynomials. The global stability and the convergence of the method are derived in a variational framework, which are confirmed in the numerical examples. For two-dimensional problems, the second-order superconvergence in the energy norm is observed, which is characteristic for the lowest-order numerical method on a structured meshes.