To investigate the characteristics of spectral element methods based on Least-Squares and Galerkin variation
two different kinds of weak formulation for Poisson equation in the polar coordinate are presented. After discretization by the Chebyshev basis function
the corresponding algebraic equations are obtained
and the structures of the coefficient matrixes are analyzed. It is clear that the algebraic equations of Least-Squares spectral element method are more complex than Galerkin spectral element method due to the introduced auxiliary variables for modifying second-order partial differential equations into first-order system. However
the boundary conditions can be more easily dealt with via Least-Squares spectral element method. Numerical results show that both spectral element methods can get high-order numerical accuracy and the numerical errors keep almost consistent. When the interpolation order in each element is fixed
the numerical errors slowly decrease by refining the elements
and the algebraic accuracy can be obtained. A faster decay of the numerical errors can be observed by heightening the interpolation order to demonstrate the spectral accuracy property when the total elements are fixed. However
if the interpolation order gets a larger value
the numerical errors increase unexpectedly for the fast increasing condition number of the algebraic equations. This research may facilitate understanding these two different spectral element methods for the Poisson equation in polar coordinate
and further solving flow problems with splitting algorithm.
QIN Guoliang, XU Zhong. A spectral element method for incompressible Navier-Stokes equations [J]. Chinese Journal of Applied Mechanics, 2000, 17(4): 20-25.
CHEN L, SHEN J, XU C. Spectral direction splitting schemes for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations [J]. East Asian Journal on Applied Mathematics, 2011, 1(3): 215-234.
GUERMOND J L, MINEV P D. A new class of massively parallel direction splitting for the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations [J]. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics Engineering, 2011, 200(23/24): 2083-2093.
MA Jianfeng, SHEN Xinrong, ZHANG Benzhao, et al. A new pseudo-spectral method for solving Poisson equation in polar coordinate system [J]. Acta Aerodynamica Sinica, 2006, 24(2): 243-245.
MEI Huan, ZENG Zhong, QIU Zhouhua, et al. A Legendre spectral element method for solving Poisson-type equation in polar coordinates [J]. Chinese Journal of Computational Mechanics, 2012, 29(5): 641-645.
BOYD J P, YU F. Comparing seven spectral methods for interpolation and for solving the Poisson equation in a disk: Zernike polynomials, Logan-Shepp ridge polynomials, Chebyshev-Fourier series, cylindrical Robert functions, Bessel-Fourier expansions, square-to-disk conformal mapping and radial basis functions [J]. Journal of Computational Physics, 2011, 230(4): 1408-1438.
PATERA A T. A spectral element method for fluid dynamics: laminar flow in a channel expansion [J]. Journal of Computational Physics, 1984, 54(3): 468-488.
JIANG B N. The Least-Squares finite element method: theory and applications in computational fluid dynamics and electromagnetics [M]. Berlin, Germany: Springer, 1998: 4-10.
PONTAZA J P, REDDY J N. Spectral/hp Least-Squares finite element formulation for the Navier-Stokes equations [J]. Journal of Computational Physics, 2003, 190(2): 523-549.
QIU Z, ZENG Z, MEI H, et al. A Fourier-Legendre spectral element method in polar coordinates [J]. Journal of Computational Physics, 2012, 231(2): 666-675.