\(hp\)-discontinuous Galerkin methods for strongly nonlinear elliptic boundary value problems (Q2483021)

The authors analyze a family of \(hp\)-discontinuous Galerkin methods for solving strongly nonlinear elliptic boundary value problems \(-\nabla \cdot a(x,u,\nabla u) + f(x,u,\nabla u) = 0 \text{ in } \Omega\) with Dirichlet boundary conditions, where \(\Omega\) is a bounded two-dimensional domain with a sufficiently smooth boundary. The \(hp\)-discontinuous Galerkin methods depend on one parameter \(\theta \in [-1,1]\). At first, some assumptions on the finite element triangulation are formulated and some approximation properties of finite element spaces are summarized. Then, the one parameter family of the \(hp\)-discontinuous Galerkin method is introduced and the existence of a discrete solution is proved by using the Brouwer fixed point theorem. An error estimate in the broken \(H^1\)-norm is derived. This estimate is optimal in the mesh size \(h\) and suboptimal in the polynomial degree \(p\). Furthermore, in the case \(\theta = -1\) an error estimate in the \(L_2\)-norm is given. This estimate is also optimal in \(h\) and suboptimal in \(p\). Finally, an application of the presented method to the mean curvature flow is discussed. Numerical experiments illustrate the presented theoretical results.