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The virtual element method (VEM) is a Galerkin approximation method that extends the finite element method to polytopal meshes. In this paper, we present two different conforming virtual element formulations for the numerical approximation of the Stokes problem that work on polygonal meshes.The velocity vector field is approximated in the virtual element spaces of the two formulations, while the pressure variable is approximated through discontinuous polynomials. Both formulations are inf-sup stable and convergent with optimal convergence rates in the $L^2$ and energy norm. We assess the effectiveness of these numerical approximations by investigating their behavior on a representative benchmark problem. The observed convergence rates are in accordance with the theoretical expectations and a weak form of the zero-divergence constraint is satisfied at the machine precision level.

We design a virtual element method for the numerical treatment of the two-dimensional parabolic variational inequality problem on unstructured polygonal meshes. Due to the expected low regularity of the exact solution, the virtual element method is based on the lowest-order virtual element space that contains the subspace of the linear polynomials defined on each element. The connection between the nonnegativity of the virtual element functions and the nonnegativity of the degrees of freedom, i.e., the values at the mesh vertices, is established by applying the Maximum and Minimum Principle Theorem. The mass matrix is computed through an approximate L 2 polynomial projection, whose properties are carefully investigated in the paper. We prove the well-posedness of the resulting scheme in two different ways that reveal the contractive nature of the VEM and its connection with the minimization of quadratic functionals. The convergence analysis requires the existence of a nonnegative quasi-interpolation operator, whose construction is also discussed in the paper. The variational crime introduced by the virtual element setting produces five error terms that we control by estimating a suitable upper bound. Numerical experiments confirm the theoretical convergence rate for the refinement in space and time on three different mesh families including distorted squares, nonconvex elements, and Voronoi tesselations.

We address the issue of designing robust stabilization terms for the nonconforming virtual element method. To this end, we transfer the problem of defining the stabilizing bilinear form from the elemental nonconforming virtual element space, whose functions are not known in closed form, to the dual space spanned by the known functionals providing the degrees of freedom. By this approach, we manage to construct different bilinear forms yielding optimal or quasi-optimal stability bounds and error estimates, under weaker assumptions on the tessellation than the ones usually considered in this framework. In particular, we prove optimality under geometrical assumptions allowing a mesh to have a very large number of arbitrarily small edges per element. Finally, we numerically assess the performance of the VEM for several different stabilizations fitting with our new framework on a set of representative test cases.

The virtual element method is well suited to the formulation of arbitrarily regular Galerkin approximations of elliptic partial differential equations of order [Formula: see text], for any integer [Formula: see text]. In fact, the virtual element paradigm provides a very effective design framework for conforming, finite dimensional subspaces of [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] being the computational domain and [Formula: see text] another suitable integer number. In this review, we first present an abstract setting for such highly regular approximations and discuss the mathematical details of how we can build conforming approximation spaces with a global high-order regularity on [Formula: see text]. Then, we illustrate specific examples in the case of second- and fourth-order partial differential equations, that correspond to the cases [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], respectively. Finally, we investigate numerically the effect on the approximation properties of the conforming highly-regular method that results from different choices of the degree of continuity of the underlying virtual element spaces and how different stabilization strategies may impact on convergence.

We discuss the p - and h p -versions of the virtual element method for the approximation of eigenpairs of elliptic operators with a potential term on polygonal meshes. An application of this model is provided by the Schrodinger equation with a pseudo-potential term. As an interesting byproduct, we present for the first time in literature an explicit construction of the stabilization of the mass matrix. We present in detail the analysis of the p -version of the method, proving exponential convergence in the case of analytic eigenfunctions. The theoretical results are supplied with a wide set of experiments. We also show numerically that, in the case of eigenfunctions with finite Sobolev regularity, an exponential approximation of the eigenvalues in terms of the cubic root of the number of degrees of freedom can be obtained by employing h p -refinements. Importantly, the geometric flexibility of polygonal meshes is exploited in the construction of the h p -spaces.

We propose a quality-based optimization strategy to reduce the total number of degrees of freedom associated with a discrete problem defined over a polygonal tessellation with the Virtual Element Method. The presented Quality Agglomeration algorithm relies only on the geometrical properties of the problem polygonal mesh, agglomerating groups of neighboring elements. We test this approach in the context of fractured porous media, in which the generation of a global conforming mesh on a Discrete Fracture Network leads to a considerable number of unknowns, due to the presence of highly complex geometries (e.g. thin triangles, large angles, small edges) and the significant size of the computational domains. We show the efficiency and the robustness of our approach, applied independently on each fracture for different network configurations, exploiting the flexibility of the Virtual Element Method in handling general polygonal elements.

Numerical integration is a basic step in the implementation of more complex numerical algorithms suitable, for example, to solve ordinary and partial differential equations. The straightforward extension of a one-dimensional integration rule to a multidimensional grid by the tensor product of the spatial directions is deemed to be practically infeasible beyond a relatively small number of dimensions, e.g., three or four. In fact, the computational burden in terms of storage and floating point operations scales exponentially with the number of dimensions. This phenomenon is known as the curse of dimensionality and motivated the development of alternative methods such as the Monte Carlo method. The tensor product approach can be very effective for high-dimensional numerical integration if we can resort to an accurate low-rank tensor-train representation of the integrand function. In this work, we discuss this approach and present numerical evidence showing that it is very competitive with the Monte Carlo method in terms of accuracy and computational costs up to several hundredths of dimensions if the integrand function is regular enough and a sufficiently accurate low-rank approximation is available.

We develop a geometrically intrinsic formulation of the arbitrary-order Virtual Element Method (VEM) on polygonal cells for the numerical solution of elliptic surface partial differential equations (PDEs). The PDE is first written in covariant form using an appropriate local reference system. The knowledge of the local parametrization allows us to consider the two-dimensional VEM scheme, without any explicit approximation of the surface geometry. The theoretical properties of the classical VEM are extended to our framework by taking into consideration the highly anisotropic character of the final discretization. These properties are extensively tested on triangular and polygonal meshes using a manufactured solution. The limitations of the scheme are verified as functions of the regularity of the surface and its approximation., Comment: 21 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables

Spectral approximation based on Hermite-Fourier expansion of the Vlasov-Poisson model for a collisionless plasma in the electro-static limit is provided, by including high-order artificial collision operators of Lenard-Bernstein type. These differential operators are suitably designed in order to preserve the physically-meaningful invariants (number of particles, momentum, energy). In view of time-discretization, stability results in appropriate norms are presented. In this study, necessary conditions link the magnitude of the artificial collision term, the number of spectral modes of the discretization, as well as the time-step. The analysis, carried out in full for the Hermite discretization of a simple linear problem in one-dimension, is then partly extended to cover the complete nonlinear Vlasov-Poisson model.

Modeling crack initiation and propagation in brittle materials is of great importance to be able to predict sudden loss of load-carrying capacity and prevent catastrophic failure under severe dynamic loading conditions. Second-order phase-field fracture models have gained wide adoption given their ability to capture the formation of complex fracture patterns, e.g. via crack merging and branching, and their suitability for implementation within the context of the conventional finite element method. Higher-order phase-field models have also been proposed to increase the regularity of the exact solution and thus increase the spatial convergence rate of its numerical approximation. However, they require special numerical techniques to enforce the necessary continuity of the phase field solution. In this paper, we derive a fourth-order phase-field model of fracture in two independent ways; namely, from Hamilton's principle and from a higher-order micromechanics-based approach. The latter approach is novel, and provides a physical interpretation of the higher-order terms in the model. In addition, we propose a continuous/discontinuous Galerkin (C/DG) method for use in computing the approximate phase-field solution. This method employs Lagrange polynomial shape functions to guarantee $C^0$-continuity of the solution at inter-element boundaries, and enforces the required $C^1$ regularity with the aid of additional variational and interior penalty terms in the weak form. The phase-field equation is coupled with the momentum balance equation to model dynamic fracture problems in hyper-elastic materials. Two benchmark problems are presented to compare the numerical behavior of the C/DG method with mixed finite element methods.

The time-dependent Richards equation can be reformulated as a nonlinear, possibly degenerate, parabolic problem in mixed form by applying the Kirchhoff transformation. A preliminary time integration yields the variational formulation. A numerical treatment of this problem using polygonal and polyhedral meshes is, then, feasible by applying the mixed virtual element method. In this setting, we study a semi-discrete and a fully-discrete virtual element approximation. The theoretical analysis shows that our virtual element formulations are well-posed and convergent, and optimal convergence rates for the approximation errors can be proved. Such theoretical results are confirmed and the accuracy is assessed by investigating the behavior of the method on a set of representative numerical experiments.

We design the conforming virtual element method for the numerical simulation of two dimensional time-dependent elastodynamics problems. We investigate the performance of the method both theoretically and numerically. We prove the stability and the convergence of the semi-discrete approximation in the energy norm and derive optimal error estimates. We also show the convergence in the $L^2$ norm. The performance of the virtual element method is assessed on a set of different computational meshes, including non-convex cells up to order four in the h-refinement setting. Exponential convergence is also experimentally seen in the p-refinement setting.

We discuss the development, analysis, implementation, and numerical assessment of a spectral method for the numerical simulation of the three-dimensional Vlasov–Maxwell equations. The method is based on a spectral expansion of the velocity space with the asymmetrically weighted Hermite functions . The resulting system of time-dependent nonlinear equations is discretized by the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method in space and by the method of lines for the time integration using explicit Runge–Kutta integrators . The resulting code, called Spectral Plasma Solver (SPS-DG), is successfully applied to standard plasma physics benchmarks to demonstrate its accuracy, robustness, and parallel scalability.

In this paper, we propose an eXtended Virtual Element Method (X-VEM) for two-dimensional linear elastic fracture . This approach, which is an extension of the standard Virtual Element Method (VEM), facilitates mesh-independent modeling of crack discontinuities and elastic crack-tip singularities on general polygonal meshes . For elastic fracture in the X-VEM, the standard virtual element space is augmented by additional basis functions that are constructed by multiplying standard virtual basis functions by suitable enrichment fields, such as asymptotic mixed-mode crack-tip solutions. The design of the X-VEM requires an extended projector that maps functions lying in the extended virtual element space onto a set spanned by linear polynomials and the enrichment fields. An efficient scheme to compute the mixed-mode stress intensity factors using the domain form of the interaction integral is described. The formulation permits integration of weakly singular functions to be performed over the boundary edges of the element. Numerical experiments are conducted on benchmark mixed-mode linear elastic fracture problems that demonstrate the sound accuracy and optimal convergence in energy of the proposed formulation.

We present the design, convergence analysis and numerical investigations of the nonconforming virtual element method with Streamline Upwind/Petrov-Galerkin (VEM-SUPG) stabilization for the numerical resolution of convection-diffusion-reaction problems in the convective-dominated regime. According to the virtual discretization approach, the bilinear form is split as the sum of a consistency and a stability term. The consistency term is given by substituting the functions of the virtual space and their gradients with their polynomial projection in each term of the bilinear form (including the SUPG stabilization term). Polynomial projections can be computed exactly from the degrees of freedom. The stability term is also built from the degrees of freedom by ensuring the correct scalability properties with respect to the mesh size and the equation coefficients. The nonconforming formulation relaxes the continuity conditions at cell interfaces and a weaker regularity condition is considered involving polynomial moments of the solution jumps at cell interface. Optimal convergence properties of the method are proved in a suitable norm, which includes a contribution from the advective stabilization terms. Experimental results confirm the theoretical convergence rates., 39 pages

We extend the conforming virtual element method (VEM) to the numerical resolution of eigenvalue problems with potential terms on a polytopic mesh. An important application is that of the Schrödinger equation with a pseudopotential term. This model is a fundamental element in the numerical resolution of more complex problems from the Density Functional Theory. The VEM is based on the construction of the discrete bilinear forms of the variational formulation through certain polynomial projection operators that are directly computable from the degrees of freedom. The method shows a great flexibility with respect to the meshes and provides a correct spectral approximation with optimal convergence rates. This point is discussed from both the theoretical and the numerical viewpoint. The performance of the method is numerically investigated by solving the quantum harmonic oscillator problem with the harmonic potential and a singular eigenvalue problem with zero potential for the first eigenvalues.

We present a virtual element method (VEM) for the numerical approximation of the electromagnetics subsystem of the resistive magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) model in two spatial dimensions. The major advantages of the virtual element method include great flexibility of polygonal meshes and automatic divergence-free constraint on the magnetic flux field. In this work, we rigorously prove the well-posedness of the method and the solenoidal nature of the discrete magnetic flux field. We also derive stability energy estimates. The design of the method includes three choices for the construction of the nodal mass matrix and criteria to more alternatives. This approach is novel in the VEM literature and allows us to preserve a commuting diagram property. We present a set of numerical experiments that independently validate theoretical results. The numerical experiments include the convergence rate study, energy estimates and verification of the divergence-free condition on the magnetic flux field. All these numerical experiments have been performed on triangular, perturbed quadrilateral and Voronoi meshes. Finally, we demonstrate the development of the VEM method on a numerical model for Hartmann flows as well as in the case of magnetic reconnection.

We prove the convergence of a spectral discretization of the Vlasov-Poisson system. The velocity term of the Vlasov equation is discretized using either Hermite functions on the infinite domain or Legendre polynomials on a bounded domain. The spatial term of the Vlasov and Poisson equations is discretized using periodic Fourier expansions. Boundary conditions are treated in weak form through a penalty type term, that can be applied also in the Hermite case. As a matter of fact, stability properties of the approximated scheme descend from this added term. The convergence analysis is carried out in details for the 1D-1V case, but results can be generalized to multidimensional domains, obtained as Cartesian product, in both space and velocity. The error estimates show the spectral convergence, under suitable regularity assumptions on the exact solution.

We study the convergence of the new family of mimetic finite difference schemes for linear diffusion problems recently proposed in [K. Lipnikov, G. Manzini, J. D. Moulton, and M. Shashkov, J. Comput. Phys, 305 (2016), pp. 111--126]. In contrast to the conventional approach, the diffusion coefficient enters both the primary mimetic operator, i.e., the discrete divergence, and the inner product in the space of gradients. The diffusion coefficient is therefore evaluated on different mesh locations, i.e., inside mesh cells and on mesh faces. Such a staggered discretization may provide the flexibility necessary for future development of efficient numerical schemes for nonlinear problems, especially for problems with degenerate coefficients. These new mimetic schemes preserve symmetry and positive-definiteness of the continuum problem, which allow us to use efficient algebraic solvers such as the preconditioned conjugate gradient method. We show that these schemes are inf-sup stable and establish a priori error...

Numerical schemes for nonlinear parabolic equations based on the harmonic averaging of cell-centered diffusion coefficients break down when some of these coefficients go to zero or their ratio grows. To tackle this problem, we propose new mimetic finite difference schemes that use a staggered discretization of the diffusion coefficient. The primary mimetic operator approximates div ( k ? ) ; the derived (dual) mimetic operator approximates - ? ( ? ) . The new mimetic schemes preserve symmetry and positive-definiteness of the continuum problem which allows us to use algebraic solvers with optimal complexity. We perform detailed numerical analysis of the new schemes for linear elliptic problems and a specially designed linear parabolic problem that has solution dynamics typical for nonlinear problems. We show that the new schemes are competitive with the state-of-the-art schemes for steady-state problems but provide much more accurate solution dynamics for the transient problem.

We present the nonconforming virtual element method (VEM) for the numerical approximation of velocity and pressure in the steady Stokes problem. The pressure is approximated using discontinuous piecewise polynomials, while each component of the velocity is approximated using the nonconforming virtual element space. On each mesh element the local virtual space contains the space of polynomials of up to a given degree, plus suitable nonpolynomial functions. The virtual element functions are implicitly defined as the solution of local Poisson problems with polynomial Neumann boundary conditions. As typical in VEM approaches, the explicit evaluation of the non-polynomial functions is not required. This approach makes it possible to construct nonconforming (virtual) spaces for any polynomial degree regardless of the parity, for two-and three-dimensional problems, and for meshes with very general polygonal and polyhedral elements. We show that the nonconforming VEM is inf-sup stable and establish optimal a priori error estimates for the velocity and pressure approximations. Numerical examples confirm the convergence analysis and the effectiveness of the method in providing high-order accurate approximations.

We explore the coupling of surface and subsurface flows on fully unstructured meshes that conform to complex soil structures. To accommodate the distorted meshes that inevitably result from explicit representation of complex soil structures, we leverage the structure of the Mimetic Finite Difference (MFD) spatial discretization scheme to couple surface and subsurface flows. The MFD method achieves second-order accuracy and maintains local mass conservation on distorted meshes. We couple the diffusion wave approximation for surface flows to the Richards equation for subsurface flow, ensuring continuity of both pressure and flux between the surface and subsurface. The MFD method is particularly convenient for this coupling because it uses face-based constraints in the subsurface system that can be expressed as face-pressure unknowns. Those unknowns are coincident with surface cell-based unknowns, thus allowing the discrete surface system to be directly substituted into the subsurface system and solved implicitly as a global system. Robust representation of the transition between wet and dry surface conditions requires upwinding of the relative permeability and is facilitated by globalization in the nonlinear solver. The approach and its implementation in the Advanced Terrestrial Simulator (ATS) are evaluated by comparison to previously published benchmarks. Using runoff from soils with patchy groundcover (duff) as an example, we show that the new method converges significantly faster in mesh convergence tests than the commonly used two-point flux approximation.

We analyse the nonconforming Virtual Element Method (VEM) for the approximation of elliptic eigenvalue problems. The nonconforming VEM allows to treat in the same formulation the two- and three-dimensional case. We present two possible formulations of the discrete problem, derived respectively by the nonstabilized and stabilized approximation of theL2-inner product, and we study the convergence properties of the corresponding discrete eigenvalue problem. The proposed schemes provide a correct approximation of the spectrum, in particular we prove optimal-order error estimates for the eigenfunctions and the usual double order of convergence of the eigenvalues. Finally we show a large set of numerical tests supporting the theoretical results, including a comparison with the conforming Virtual Element choice.

A.C. gratefully acknowledges support from the College of Science and Engineering of the University of Leicester and the support of the EPSRC (grant EP/L022745/1). G.M. gratefully acknowledges the support of the LDRD-ER project #20140270 ‘From the finite element method to the virtual element method’ at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and of the DOE Office of Science Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Program in Applied Mathematics Research. A.R. gratefully acknowledges the research support from the University of Milano–Bicocca. N.S. gratefully acknowledges the research support of the National Science Foundation through contract grant CMMI-1334783 to the University of California at Davis.

This document contains working annotations on the Virtual Element Method (VEM) for the approximate solution of diffusion problems with variable coefficients. To read this document you are assumed to have familiarity with concepts from the numerical discretization of Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) and, in particular, the Finite Element Method (FEM). This document is not an introduction to the FEM, for which many textbooks are available. Eventually, this document will evolve into a tutorial introduction to the VEM (but this is really a long-term goal).

International audience; In this work we develop arbitrary-order Discontinuous Skeletal Gradient Discretisations (DSGD) on general polytopal meshes. Discontinuous Skeletal refers to the fact that the globally coupled unknowns are broken polynomial on the mesh skeleton. The key ingredient is a high-order gradient reconstruction composed of two terms: (i) a consistent contribution obtained mimicking an integration by parts formula inside each element and (ii) a stabilising term for which sufficient design conditions are provided. An example of stabilisation that satisfies the design conditions is proposed based on a local lifting of high-order residuals on a Raviart–Thomas–Nédélec subspace. We prove that the novel DSGDs satisfy coercivity, consistency, limit-conformity, and compactness requirements that ensure convergence for a variety of elliptic and parabolic problems. Links with Hybrid High-Order, non-conforming Mimetic Finite Difference and non-conforming Virtual Element methods are also studied. Numerical examples complete the exposition.

We develop and analyze a post processing technique for the family of low-order mimetic discretizations based on vertex unknowns for the numerical treatment of diffusion problems on unstructured polygonal and polyhedral meshes. The post processing works in two steps. First, from the nodal degrees of freedom, we reconstruct an elemental-based vector field that approximates the gradient of the exact solution. Second, we solve a local problem for each mesh vertex associated with a scheme degree of freedom to determine a post processed normal flux that is conservative and divergence preserving. Theoretical results and numerical experiments for two-dimensional (2D) and 3D benchmark problems show optimal convergence rates. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 31: 336–363, 2015

The mimetic finite difference (MFD) method mimics fundamental properties of mathematical and physical systems including conservation laws, symmetry and positivity of solutions, duality and self-adjointness of differential operators, and exact mathematical identities of the vector and tensor calculus. This article is the first comprehensive review of the 50-year long history of the mimetic methodology and describes in a systematic way the major mimetic ideas and their relevance to academic and real-life problems. The supporting applications include diffusion, electromagnetics, fluid flow, and Lagrangian hydrodynamics problems. The article provides enough details to build various discrete operators on unstructured polygonal and polyhedral meshes and summarizes the major convergence results for the mimetic approximations. Most of these theoretical results, which are presented here as lemmas, propositions and theorems, are either original or an extension of existing results to a more general formulation using polyhedral meshes. Finally, flexibility and extensibility of the mimetic methodology are shown by deriving higher-order approximations, enforcing discrete maximum principles for diffusion problems, and ensuring the numerical stability for saddle-point systems.

We develop and analyse a new family of virtual element methods on unstructured polygonal meshes for the diffusion problem in primal form, which uses arbitrarily regular discrete spaces Vh ⊂ C α, α ∈ N. The degrees of freedom are (a) solution and derivative values of various degrees at suitable nodes and (b) solution moments inside polygons. The convergence of the method is proved theoretically and an optimal error estimate is derived. Numerical experiments confirm the convergence rate that is expected from the theory. © 2014 Published by Oxford University Press.

We consider a problem of reducing numerical dispersion for electromagnetic wave in the domain with two materials separated by a at interface in 2D with a factor of two di erence in wave speed. The computational mesh in the homogeneous parts of the domain away from the interface consists of square elements. Here the method construction is based on m-adaptation construction in homogeneous domain that leads to fourth-order numerical dispersion (vs. second order in non-optimized method). The size of the elements in two domains also di ers by a factor of two, so as to preserve the same value of Courant number in each. Near the interface where two meshes merge the mesh with larger elements consists of degenerate pentagons. We demonstrate that prior to m-adaptation the accuracy of the method falls from second to rst due to breaking of symmetry in the mesh. Next we develop m-adaptation framework for the interface region and devise an optimization criteria. We prove that for the interface problem m-adaptation cannot produce increase in method accuracy. This is in contrast to homogeneous medium where m-adaptation can increase accuracy by two orders.

We review basic design principles underpinning the construction of the mimetic finite difference and a few finite volume and finite element schemes for mixed formulations of elliptic problems. For a class of low-order mixed-hybrid schemes, we show connections between these principles and prove that the consistency and stability conditions must lead to a member of the mimetic family of schemes regardless of the selected discretization framework. Finally, we give two examples of using flexibility of the mimetic framework: derivation of arbitrary-order schemes and inexpensive convergent schemes for nonlinear problems with small diffusion coefficients.

We present, on the simplest possible case, what we consider as the very basic features of the (brand new) virtual element method. As the readers will easily recognize, the virtual element method could easily be regarded as the ultimate evolution of the mimetic finite differences approach. However, in their last step they became so close to the traditional finite elements that we decided to use a different perspective and a different name. Now the virtual element spaces are just like the usual finite element spaces with the addition of suitable non-polynomial functions. This is far from being a new idea. See for instance the very early approach of E. Wachspress [A Rational Finite Element Basic (Academic Press, 1975)] or the more recent overview of T.-P. Fries and T. Belytschko [The extended/generalized finite element method: An overview of the method and its applications, Int. J. Numer. Methods Engrg.84 (2010) 253–304]. The novelty here is to take the spaces and the degrees of freedom in such a way that the elementary stiffness matrix can be computed without actually computing these non-polynomial functions, but just using the degrees of freedom. In doing that we can easily deal with complicated element geometries and/or higher-order continuity conditions (like C1, C2, etc.). The idea is quite general, and could be applied to a number of different situations and problems. Here however we want to be as clear as possible, and to present the simplest possible case that still gives the flavor of the whole idea.