Analysis of a BDF-DGFE scheme for nonlinear convection-diffusion problems (Q957928)

A numerical procedure is designed to get approximate solutions of a scalar nonlinear convection-diffusion equation on a bounded polyhedral domain \(\Omega \in \mathbb{R}^d\) (\(d=2,3\)). It consists of a spatial discretization based on the symmetric variant of the discontinuous Galerkin finite element (DGFE) method and a semi-implicit \(k\)-step backward difference formula (BDF) for integrating the resulting system of stiff ordinary differential equations (ODEs) in time. The space semi-discretization algorithm, previously analysed by the authors, gives optimal order of convergence if certain technical requirements are satisfied. With respect to the discretization of the resulting ODEs in time, the so-called implicit-explicit methods are applied. In particular, the (linear) diffusive and stabilization terms are discretized implicitly, whereas the non linear convective term is treated by an explicit extrapolation method. An error analysis of the procedure is carried out, obtaining a priori asymptotic error estimates in the discrete \(L^{\infty}(L^2(\Omega))\)-norm and the \(L^2(H^1(\Omega)\)-seminorm with respect to the mesh size \(h\) and time step \(\tau\) of the form \(\mathcal{O}(h^{p+1} + \tau^k)\) and \(\mathcal{O}(h^{p} + \tau^k)\), respectively, with \(k=2,3\). These theoretical results are illustrated with several numerical examples.