Convergence of fractional step mimetic finite difference discretizations for semilinear parabolic problems (Q972313)

A semilinear parabolic initial-boundary value problem is considered. The spatial semidiscretization of the considered problem is done by means of a mimetic finite difference method. This method approximates the differential operators by discrete operators which preserve the conservation laws and the fundamental identities of vector calculus. An error analysis of the semidiscrete scheme is derived in the framework of the Galerkin method. Then, the authors set the basis for the domain decomposition technique and introduce a linearly implicit fractional step Runge-Kutta scheme. The convergence analysis of the totally discrete scheme is proved. A numerical test is shown to illustrate the theoretical results.