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A recent study [D. N. Arnold, D. Boffi, and R. S. Falk, SIAM J. Numer. Anal., 42 (2005), pp. 2429-2451] reveals that convergence of finite element methods using H(div , O)-compatible finite element spaces deteriorates on nonaffine quadrilateral grids. This phenomena is particularly troublesome for the lowest-order Raviart-Thomas elements, because it implies loss of convergence in some norms for finite element solutions of mixed and least-squares methods. In this paper we propose reformulation of finite element methods, based on the natural mimetic divergence operator [M. Shashkov, Conservative Finite Difference Methods on General Grids, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 1996], which restores the order of convergence. Reformulations of mixed Galerkin and leastsquares methods for the Darcy equation illustrate our approach. We prove that reformulated methods converge optimally with respect to a norm involving the mimetic divergence operator. Furthermore, we prove that standard and reformulated versions of the mixed Galerkin method lead to identical linear systems, but the two versions of the least-squares method are veritably different. The surprising conclusion is that the degradation of convergence in the mixed method on nonaffine quadrilateral grids is superficial, and that the lowest-order Raviart-Thomas elements are safe to use in this method. However, the breakdown in the least-squares method is real, and there one should use our proposed reformulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we develop techniques for computing elementwise conservative approximations of the flux on element boundaries for the continuous Galerkin method. The technique is based on computing a correction of the average normal flux on an edge or face. The correction is a jump in a piecewise constant or linear function. We derive a basic algorithm which is based on solving a global system of equations and a parallel algorithm based on solving local problems on stars. The methods work on meshes with different element types and hanging nodes. We prove existence, uniqueness, and optimal order error estimates. Lastly, we illustrate our results by a few numerical examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for solving diffusion problems is introduced. Unlike the traditional local discontinuous Galerkin method, the scheme called the direct discontinuous Galerkin (DDG) method is based on the direct weak formulation for solutions of parabolic equations in each computational cell and lets cells communicate via the numerical flux ux only. We propose a general numerical flux formula for the solution derivative, which is consistent and conservative; and we then introduce a concept of admissibility to identify a class of numerical fluxes so that the nonlinear stability for both one-dimensional (1D) and multidimensional problems are ensured. Furthermore, when applying the DDG scheme with admissible numerical flux to the 1D linear case, kth order accuracy in an energy norm is proven when using kth degree polynomials. The DDG method has the advantage of easier formulation and implementation and efficient computation of the solution. A series of numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the high order accuracy of the method. In particular, we study the numerical performance of the scheme with different admissible numerical fluxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]