Linear Advection-Diffusion¶

Problem description¶

This example solves the equation

$\nabla \cdot (-\epsilon \nabla u + \bfb u) = 0$

in the domain $\Omega = (0,1)^2$ where $\epsilon > 0$ is the diffusivity and $\bfb = (b_1, b_2)^T$ a constant advection velocity. We assume that $b_1 > 0$ and $b_2 > 0$ . The boundary conditions are Dirichlet.

With a small $\epsilon$ , this is a singularly perturbed problem whose solution is close to 1 in most of the domain and forms a thin boundary layer along the top and right edges of $\Omega$ .

Solution for $\epsilon = 0.01$ . Note - view selected to show the boundary layer:

Initial mesh for automatic adaptivity:

This mesh is not fine enough in the boundary layer region to prevent the solution from oscillating:

Here we use the same view as for the solution above. As you can see, this approximation is not very close to the final solution. The oscillations can be suppressed by applying the multiscale stabilization (STABILIZATION_ON = true):

Automatic adaptivity can sometimes take care of them as well, as we will see below. Standard stabilization techniques include SUPG, GLS and others. For this example, we implemented the so-called variational multiscale stabilization that can be used on an optional basis. We have also implemented a shock-capturing term for the reader to experiment with.