Maximum principle in linear finite element approximations of anisotropic diffusion-convection-reaction problems (Q2510403)

The paper considers an old problem of the discrete maximum principle for the finite element method and generalizes previous results. The main contribution is the analysis of the heterogeneous and anisotropic diffusion together with the heterogeneous convection and reaction terms. The authors study a linear elliptic second-order partial differential equation with variable coefficients in arbitrary space dimension. They discretize the corresponding Dirichlet boundary value problem by standard linear simplicial finite elements. The main result is a sufficient condition on the geometry and size of the mesh that guarantees the validity of the discrete maximum principle. The paper is concluded by several numerical examples, where the derived condition is used to generate and to refine triangular meshes that yield the discrete maximum principle and eliminate the overshoots and undershoots in convection-diffusion problems with anisotropic diffusion.