Paper 2, Section II, C

Numerical Analysis
Part II, 2013

Consider the advection equation ut=uxu_{t}=u_{x} on the unit interval x[0,1]x \in[0,1] and t0t \geqslant 0, where u=u(x,t)u=u(x, t), subject to the initial condition u(x,0)=φ(x)u(x, 0)=\varphi(x) and the boundary condition u(1,t)=0u(1, t)=0, where φ\varphi is a given smooth function on [0,1][0,1].

(i) We commence by discretising the advection equation above with finite differences on the equidistant space-time grid {(mΔx,nΔt),m=0,,M+1,n=0,,T}\{(m \Delta x, n \Delta t), m=0, \ldots, M+1, n=0, \ldots, T\} with Δx=1/(M+1)\Delta x=1 /(M+1) and Δt>0\Delta t>0. We obtain an equation for umnu(mΔx,nΔt)u_{m}^{n} \approx u(m \Delta x, n \Delta t) that reads

umn+1=umn+12μ(um+1num1n),m=1,,M,nZ+u_{m}^{n+1}=u_{m}^{n}+\frac{1}{2} \mu\left(u_{m+1}^{n}-u_{m-1}^{n}\right), \quad m=1, \ldots, M, n \in \mathbb{Z}^{+}

with the condition u0n=0u_{0}^{n}=0 for all nZ+n \in \mathbb{Z}^{+}and μ=Δt/Δx\mu=\Delta t / \Delta x.

What is the order of approximation (that is, the order of the local error) in space and time of the above discrete solution to the exact solution of the advection equation? Write the scheme in matrix form and deduce for which choices of μ\mu this approximation converges to the exact solution. State (without proof) any theorems you use. [You may use the fact that for a tridiagonal M×MM \times M matrix

(αβ00β00β00βα)\left(\begin{array}{cccc} \alpha & \beta & 0 & 0 \\ -\beta & \ddots & \ddots & 0 \\ 0 & \ddots & \ddots & \beta \\ 0 & 0 & -\beta & \alpha \end{array}\right)

the eigenvalues are given by λ=α+2iβcosπM+1\lambda_{\ell}=\alpha+2 i \beta \cos \frac{\ell \pi}{M+1}.]

(ii) How does the order change when we replace the central difference approximation of the first derivative in space by forward differences, that is um+1numnu_{m+1}^{n}-u_{m}^{n} instead of (um+1num1n)/2?\left(u_{m+1}^{n}-u_{m-1}^{n}\right) / 2 ? For which choices of μ\mu is this new scheme convergent?

(iii) Instead of the approximation in (i) we consider the following method for numerically solving the advection equation,

umn+1=μ(um+1num1n)+umn1u_{m}^{n+1}=\mu\left(u_{m+1}^{n}-u_{m-1}^{n}\right)+u_{m}^{n-1}

where we additionally assume that um1u_{m}^{1} is given. What is the order of this method for a fixed μ\mu ?