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This article concerns finite element approximations of a quasi-static poroelasticity model in displacementpressure formulation, which describes the dynamics of poro-elastic materials under an applied mechanical force on the boundary. To better describe the multiphysics process of deformation and diffusion for poroelastic materials, we first present a reformulation of the original model by introducing two pseudo-pressures. We then propose a time-stepping algorithm that decouples the reformulated partial differential equation (PDE) problem at each time step into two sub-problems: one of which is a generalized Stokes problem for the displacement vector field (of the solid network of the poroelastic material) along with one pseudopressure field, and the other is a diffusion problem for the other pseudo-pressure field (of the solvent of the material). To make this multiphysics approach feasible numerically, two critical issues must be resolved: the first one is the uniqueness of the generalized Stokes problem and the other is to find a good boundary condition for the diffusion equation, so that it also becomes uniquely solvable. To address the first issue, we discover certain conserved quantities for the PDE solution that provide ideal candidates for a needed boundary condition for the pseudo-pressure field. The solution to the second issue is to use the generalized Stokes problem to generate a boundary condition for the diffusion problem. A practical advantage of the time-stepping algorithm allows one to use any convergent Stokes solver (and its code) together with any convergent diffusion equation solver (and its code) to solve the poroelasticity model. In this article, the Taylor-Hood mixed finite element method combined with the P1 -conforming finite element method is used as an example to demonstrate the viability of the proposed multiphysics approach. It is proved that the solutions of the fully discrete finite element methods fulfill a discrete energy law, which mimics the differential energy law satisfied by the PDE solution and converges optimally in the energy norm. Moreover, it is showed that the proposed formulation also has a built-in mechanism to overcome so-called 'locking phenomenon' associated with the numerical approximations of the poroelasticity model. Numerical experiments are presented to show the performance of the proposed approach and methods, and to demonstrate the absence of 'locking phenomenon' in our numerical experiments. This article also presents a detailed PDE analysis for the poroelasticity model, especially it is proved that this model converges to the well-known Biot's consolidation model from soil mechanics as the constrained specific storage coefficient tends to zero. As a result, the proposed approach and methods are robust under such a limit process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with finite element approximations of W2,p strong solutions of second-order linear elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs) in non-divergence form with continuous coefficients. A nonstandard (primal) finite element method, which uses finite-dimensional subspaces consisting of globally continuous piecewise polynomial functions, is proposed and analyzed. The main novelty of the finite element method is to introduce an interior penalty term, which penalizes the jump of the flux across the interior element edges/faces, to augment a non-symmetric piecewise defined and PDE-induced bilinear form. Existence, uniqueness and error estimate in a discrete W2,p energy norm are proved for the proposed finite element method. This is achieved by establishing a discrete Calderon-Zygmund-type estimate and mimicking strong solution PDE techniques at the discrete level. Numerical experiments are provided to test the performance of proposed finite element methods and to validate the convergence theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes and analyzes two fully discrete mixed interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods for the fourth order nonlinear Cahn-Hilliard equation. Both methods use the backward Euler method for time discretization and interior penalty DG methods for spatial discretization. They differ from each other on how the nonlinear term is treated; one of them is based on fully implicit time-stepping and the other uses energy-splitting time-stepping. The primary goal of the paper is to prove the convergence of the numerical interfaces of the DG methods to the interface of the Hele-Shaw flow. This is achieved by establishing error estimates that depend on ϵ-1 only in some low polynomial orders, instead of exponential orders. Similar to [X. Feng and A. Prohl, Numer. Math., 74 (2004), pp. 47-84], the crux is to prove a discrete spectrum estimate in the discontinuous Galerkin finite element space. However, the validity of such a result is not obvious because the DG space is not a subspace of the (energy) space HM1(Ω) and it is larger than the finite element space. This difficulty is overcome by a delicate perturbation argument which relies on the discrete spectrum estimate in the finite element space proved by Feng and Prohl. Numerical experiment results are also presented to gauge the theoretical results and the performance of the proposed fully discrete mixed DG methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Ericksen-Leslie model describes dynamics of low molar-mass nematic liquid crystals, where the spatiotemporal distribution of defects defining texture is represented by the director unit vector field d : ΩT → S2. It consists of the Navier-Stokes equations with an extra viscous stress tensor, and a convective harmonic map heat flow equation to govern the dynamics of the director field. Two fully discrete finite element methods, for a regularized system using the Ginzburg-Landau regularization and for the limiting Ericksen-Leslie model, are proposed, and well-posedness and related discrete energy laws are established. For the regularized model, unconditional convergence of finite element solutions towards weak solutions of the continuum model as well as convergence towards measure-valued solutions of the limiting Ericksen-Leslie model are verified when the mesh parameters and the regularization parameter successively tend to zero. Computational experiments are also presented to show the importance of balancing numerical and regularization parameters, to compare regularized and direct approaches, and to show numerically the finite-time formation, annihilation, and evolution of point defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An explicit fully discrete finite element method, which satisfies the nonconvex side constraint at every node, is developed for approximating the p-harmonic flow for p ϵ (1, ∞). Convergence of the method is established under certain conditions on the domain and mesh. Computational examples are presented to demonstrate finite-time blow-ups and qualitative geometric changes of weak solutions of the p-harmonic flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]