Discrete exterior calculus (DEC) is a structure-preserving numerical framework for partial differential equations solution, particularly suitable for simplicial meshes. A longstanding and widespread assumption has been that DEC requires special (Delaunay) triangulations, which complicated the mesh generation process especially on curved surfaces. This paper presents numerical evidences demonstrating that this restriction is unnecessary. Convergence experiments are carried out for various physical problems using both Delaunay and non-Delaunay triangulations. Signed diagonal definition for the key DEC operator (Hodge star) is adopted. The errors converge as expected for all considered meshes and experiments. This relieves the DEC paradigm from unnecessary triangulation limitation.
We derive a numerical method for Darcy flow, hence also for Poissons equation in mixed (first order) form, based on discrete exterior calculus (DEC). Exterior calculus is a generalization of vector calculus to smooth manifolds and DEC is one of its discretizations on simplicial complexes such as triangle and tetrahedral meshes. DEC is a coordinate invariant discretization, in that it does not depend on the embedding of the simplices or the whole mesh. We start by rewriting the governing equations of Darcy flow using the language of exterior calculus. This yields a formulation in terms of flux differential form and pressure. The numerical method is then derived by using the framework provided by DEC for discretizing differential forms and operators that act on forms. We also develop a discretization for spatially dependent Hodge star that varies with the permeability of the medium. This also allows us to address discontinuous permeability. The matrix representation for our discrete non-homogeneous Hodge star is diagonal, with positive diagonal entries. The resulting linear system of equations for flux and pressure are saddle type, with a diagonal matrix as the top left block. The performance of the proposed numerical method is illustrated on many standard test problems. These include patch tests in two and three dimensions, comparison with analytically known solution in two dimensions, layered medium with alternating permeability values, and a test with a change in permeability along the flow direction. We also show numerical evidence of convergence of the flux and the pressure. A convergence experiment is also included for Darcy flow on a surface. A short introduction to the relevant parts of smooth and discrete exterior calculus is included in this paper. We also include a discussion of the boundary condition in terms of exterior calculus.
A conservative discretization of incompressible Navier-Stokes equations is developed based on discrete exterior calculus (DEC). A distinguishing feature of our method is the use of an algebraic discretization of the interior product operator and a combinatorial discretization of the wedge product. The governing equations are first rewritten using the exterior calculus notation, replacing vector calculus differential operators by the exterior derivative, Hodge star and wedge product operators. The discretization is then carried out by substituting with the corresponding discrete operators based on the DEC framework. Numerical experiments for flows over surfaces reveal a second order accuracy for the developed scheme when using structured-triangular meshes, and first order accuracy for otherwise unstructured meshes. By construction, the method is conservative in that both mass and vorticity are conserved up to machine precision. The relative error in kinetic energy for inviscid flow test cases converges in a second order fashion with both the mesh size and the time step.
There are very few results on mixed finite element methods on surfaces. A theory for the study of such methods was given recently by Holst and Stern, using a variational crimes framework in the context of finite element exterior calculus. However, we are not aware of any numerical experiments where mixed finite elements derived from discretizations of exterior calculus are used for a surface domain. This short note shows results of our preliminary experiments using mixed methods for Darcy flow (hence scalar Poissons equation in mixed form) on surfaces. We demonstrate two numerical methods. One is derived from the primal-dual Discrete Exterior Calculus and the other from lowest order finite element exterior calculus. The programming was done in the language Python, using the PyDEC package which makes the code very short and easy to read. The qualitative convergence studies seem to be promising.
In this work, we develop a discretisation method for the mixed formulation of the magnetostatic problem supporting arbitrary orders and polyhedral meshes. The method is based on a global discrete de Rham (DDR) sequence, obtained by patching the local spaces constructed in [Di Pietro, Droniou, Rapetti, Fully discrete polynomial de Rham sequences of arbitrary degree on polygons and polyhedra, arXiv:1911.03616] by enforcing the single-valuedness of the components attached to the boundary of each element. The first main contribution of this paper is a proof of exactness relations for this global DDR sequence, obtained leveraging the exactness of the corresponding local sequence and a topological assembly of the mesh valid for domains that do not enclose any void. The second main contribution is the formulation and well-posedness analysis of the method, which includes the proof of uniform Poincare inequalities for the discrete divergence and curl operators. The convergence rate in the natural energy norm is numerically evaluated on standard and polyhedral meshes. When the DDR sequence of degree $kge 0$ is used, the error converges as $h^{k+1}$, with $h$ denoting the meshsize.
For the Hodge--Laplace equation in finite element exterior calculus, we introduce several families of discontinuous Galerkin methods in the extended Galerkin framework. For contractible domains, this framework utilizes seven fields and provides a unifying inf-sup analysis with respect to all discretization and penalty parameters. It is shown that the proposed methods can be hybridized as a reduced two-field formulation.