Adaptive spacetime meshing for discontinuous Galerkin methods (Q950398)

The author presents and extends a discontinuous FEM method introduced by \textit{A. Üngör} and \textit{A. Sheffer} [Tent-Pitcher: A meshing algorithm for space--time discontinuous Galerkin methods, in: Proc. 9th Internat. Meshing Roundtable, 111--122 (2000)] to solve hyperbolic equations. This algorithm, called Tent Pitcher, incrementally constructs an unstructured simplicial spacetime mesh to support an efficient discontinuous Galerkin method. As the author remarks, especially for nonlinear problems, Tent Pitcher requires unnecessary strict geometric constraints, and relaxes them in order to adapt the mesh generation to evolving physics and to give the possibility to adaptively refine or coarsen the mesh. This permits to advance the solution in different parts of the domain independently and at different rates. Among the important applications we mention the modeling of traffic flow, seismic waves, acoustics and mechanical stresses in materials. The 15 figures of the article contribute to the excellent quality and comprehensibility of the paper both in its survey and original part.