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We present a general framework to compute upper and lower bounds for linear-functional outputs of the exact solutions of the Poisson equation based on reconstructions of the field variable and flux for both the primal and adjoint problems. The method is devised from a generalization of the complementary energy principle and the duality theory. Using duality theory, the computation of bounds is reduced to finding independent potential and equilibrated flux reconstructions. A generalization of this result is also introduced allowing to derive alternative guaranteed bounds from nearly-arbitrary flux reconstructions (only zero-order equilibration is required). This approach is applicable to any numerical method used to compute the solution. In this work, the proposed approach is applied to derive bounds for the hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) method. An attractive feature of the proposed approach is that superconvergence on the bound gap is achieved, yielding accurate bounds even for very coarse meshes. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the performance and convergence of the bounds for the HDG method in both uniform and adaptive mesh refinements., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

This paper reports on a laboratory experiment to study the effect of vehicle net charge on theinception of a positive leader from an aircraft exposed to high atmospheric electric fields. The experimentmodels the first stage of aircraft-triggered lightning in which a positive leader typically develops from thevehicle and is shortly afterwards followed by a negative leader. This mechanism of lightning initiationamounts to around 90% of strikes to aircraft. Aircraft can acquire net charge levels of the order of amillicoulomb from a number of sources including corona emission, charged particles in the engineexhaust, and charge transfer by collisions with particles in the atmosphere. In addition, aircraft couldpotentially be artificially charged through controlled charge emission from the surface. Experiments wereperformed on a model aircraft with a 1m wingspan, which was suspended between two parallel electrodesin a 1.45m gap with voltage difference of a few hundred kilovolts applied across it. In this configuration,it is found that the breakdown field can vary by as much as 30% for the range of charging levels tested. Theexperimental results show agreement with an electrostatic model of leader initiation from aircraft, and themodel indicates that the effect can be substantially stronger if additional negative charge is added to theaircraft. The results from this work suggest that flying uncharged is not optimal in terms of lightningavoidance and open up the possibility of developing risk-reduction strategies based on net charge control, Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

This is the accepted version of the following article: [Gargallo-Peiró, A., Roca, X., Peraire, J., and Sarrate, J. (2016) A distortion measure to validate and generate curved high-order meshes on CAD surfaces with independence of parameterization. Int. J. Numer. Meth. Engng, 106: 1100–1130. doi: 10.1002/nme.5162], which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/nme.5162/abstract, A framework to validate and generate curved nodal high-order meshes on Computer-Aided Design (CAD) surfaces is presented. The proposed framework is of major interest to generate meshes suitable for thin-shell and 3D finite element analysis with unstructured high-order methods. First, we define a distortion (quality) measure for high-order meshes on parameterized surfaces that we prove to be independent of the surface parameterization. Second, we derive a smoothing and untangling procedure based on the minimization of a regularization of the proposed distortion measure. The minimization is performed in terms of the parametric coordinates of the nodes to enforce that the nodes slide on the surfaces. Moreover, the proposed algorithm repairs invalid curved meshes (untangling), deals with arbitrary polynomial degrees (high-order), and handles with low-quality CAD parameterizations (independence of parameterization). Third, we use the optimization procedure to generate curved nodal high-order surface meshes by means of an a posteriori approach. Given a linear mesh, we increase the polynomial degree of the elements, curve them to match the geometry, and optimize the location of the nodes to ensure mesh validity. Finally, we present several examples to demonstrate the features of the optimization procedure, and to illustrate the surface mesh generation process., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

We present a robust method for generating high-order nodal tetrahedral curved meshes. The approach consists of modifying an initial linear mesh by first, introducing high-order nodes, second, displacing the boundary nodes to ensure that they are on the CAD surface, and third, smoothing and untangling the mesh obtained after the displacement of the boundary nodes to produce a valid curved high-order mesh. The smoothing algorithm is based on the optimization of a regularized measure of the mesh distortion relative to the original linear mesh. This means that whenever possible, the resulting mesh preserves the geometrical features of the initial linear mesh such as shape, stretching and size. We present several examples to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Furthermore, the examples show that the implementation of the optimization problem is robust and capable of handling situations in which the mesh before optimization contains a large number of invalid elements. We consider cases with polynomial approximations up to degree ten, large deformations of the curved boundaries, concave boundaries, and highly stretched boundary layer elements. The meshes obtained are suitable for high-order finite element analyses., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author’s final draft)

A procedure to quantify the distortion (quality) of a high-order mesh composed of curved tetrahedral elements is presented. The proposed technique has two main applications. First, it can be used to check the validity and quality of a high-order tetrahedral mesh. Second, it allows the generation of curved meshes composed of valid and high-quality high-order tetrahedral elements. To this end, we describe a method to smooth and untangle high-order tetrahedral meshes simultaneously by minimizing the proposed mesh distortion. Moreover, we present a -continuation procedure to improve the initial configuration of a high-order mesh for the optimization process. Finally, we present several results to illustrate the two main applications of the proposed technique., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author’s final draft)