Numerical solution of a two-dimensional singularly perturbed reaction-diffusion problem with discontinuous coefficients (Q861155)

The author considers the numerical solution of a singularly perturbed elliptic reaction-diffusion problem -- the second-order derivatives are multiplied by a small parameter \({\epsilon}^2\) -- on a rectangular domain, where the coefficients and the right-hand side are sufficiently smooth functions with possible discontinuities on a line interface. Uniform meshes are not appropriate for these problems because the solutions are characterized by the presence of regular exponential layers of a width \(\mathcal{O}(\epsilon)\) in a neighborhood of the interface and domain boundary. Decomposing the solution in regular and singular components and using a layer adapted Shishkin type mesh with modifications at the interface points a finite volume difference scheme is constructed. A second-order \(\epsilon\)-uniform convergence in the maximum norm is proved, and corresponding a priori estimates are derived. The results are validated by numerical experiments for an example with known exact solution.