Coupling of the finite volume element method and the boundary element method: an a priori convergence result (Q2903002)

The coupled system of a diffusion convection reaction process in an interior domain and a diffusion process in the corresponding unbounded exterior domain is investigated from the numerical point of view.NEWLINENEWLINEThe proposed numerical scheme consists of coupling a finite volume element method (FVEM) for the problem established on the interior domain with the boundary element method (BEM) in the exterior domain. This method extends recent results obtained with coupling of finite element and boundary element methods also for the problems with convection term. The proposed method uses a finite volume element method which provides a local conservation of numerical fluxes in genera.NEWLINENEWLINEFirst, the existence and the uniqueness of the solution of an equivalent weak form of the solution is derived using the Lax-Milgram theorem. Then the discrete FVEM-BEM coupling system is developed and a priori convergence results are proved. The proposed method is extended also for the case when the upwind approximation is used for singularly perturbed diffusion convection problems, i.e. the diffusion is small with respect to the convection term. For this case, convergence estimate is valid, too.NEWLINENEWLINEFinally, two 2-D numerical examples for the diffusion convection problem as well as a convection dominated problem confirm the accuracy of the proposed numerical schemes.