Convergence of V- and F-cycle multigrid methods for the biharmonic problem using the Hsieh-Clough-Tocher element (Q4680480)

The goal of the material is the study of multigrid V- and F-cycle algorithms for the biharmonic problem using the Hsieh-Clough-Tocher (H-C-T) element. The first section contains an introduction in which the variational problem for the biharmonic equation with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions on a bounded polygonal domain is presented. In section two the author describes the multigrid V- and F-cycle algorithms using the H-C-T macro element. This H-C-T macro element used to obtain the numerical approximation of the solution of the given problem is defined on a triangle. The shape functions are those \(C^1\) functions on the triangle whose restrictions to each smaller triangle formed by connecting the centroid and two vertices of the triangle are cubic polynomials. The nodal variables include the evaluations of the shape functions at the vertices of the triangle, the evaluation of the gradients at the vertices and of the normal derivatives at the midpoints of the edges of the triangle. Section three presents the properties of the H-C-T interpolation operators and intergrid transfer operators. The convergence analysis of the algorithms is proved in section four. The last section presents some numerical results for the case of an unit square domain and an \(L\)-shaped one, to illustrate the theorems in the previous section.