A Petrov-Galerkin formulation for advection-reaction-diffusion problems

In this work we present a new method called (SU + C)PG to solve advection-reaction-diffusion scalar equations by the Finite Element Method (FEM). The SUPG (for Streamline Upwind Petrev-Galerkin) method is currently one of the most popular methods for advection-diffusion problems due to its inherent consistency and efficiency in avoiding the spurious oscillations obtained from the plain Galerkin method when there are discontinuities in the solution. Following this ideas, Tezduyar and Park treated the more general advection-reaction-diffusion problem and they developed a stabilizing term for advection-reaction problems without significant diffusive boundary layers. In this work an SUPG extension for all situations is performed, covering the whole plane represented by the Peclet number and the dimensionless reaction number. The scheme is based on the extension of the super-convergence feature through the inclusion of an additional perturbation function and a corresponding proportionality constant. Both proportionality constants (that one corresponding to the standard perturbation function from SUPG, and the new one introduced here) are selected in order to verify the 'super-convergence' feature, i.e. exact nodal values are obtained for a restricted class of problems (uniform mesh, no source term, constant physical properties). It is also shown that the (SU + C)PG scheme verifies the Discrete Maximum Principle (DMP), that guarantees uniform convergence of the finite element solution. Moreover, it is shown that super-convergence is closely related to the DMP, motivating the interest in developing numerical schemes that extend the super-convergence feature to a broader class of problems.