A Projection-Based Error Analysis of HDG Methods for a Nonlinear System: Coupled in Both Directions

Abstract

A technique for the error analysis of hybrid discontinuous Galerkin methods (HDG) is applied to a coupled problem. The technique relies on the use of a projection whose design is inspired by the numerical traces of the methods. When this technique appeared in the literature (Cockburn et al., 2010), the authors performed an analysis for an elliptical problem. In this work, we will analyze two coupled elliptical subproblems. The main idea is to apply this projection technique, defined based on the shape of the numerical traces, in the numerical analysis of the HDG method for the coupled problem to verify whether this numerical analysis technique still maintains its main characteristics, such as simplicity and consistency, even with this coupling. The analysis of the coupled problem in two directions was carried out following the strategy of first analyzing the partially coupled problem (De Oliveira, 2024), and then the coupled problem in both directions. The differences between both problems were the analytical development of the coupling and the computation of the approximate solution, which in the problem treated here requires a fixed point algorithm. We expect that the orders of convergence for the approximate solutions correspond to theoretical expectations with the approximation spaces used, which are made up of natural polynomials, that is, order k for vector variables and k+1 for scalar variables. All theoretical and and experimental objectives were achieved, i.e., the convergence in the HDG simulations corresponded to what was theoretically expected.