The convergence of mimetic discretization for rough grids

• Authors: J. M. Hyman;S. Steinberg
• Venue: Computers & Mathematics with Applications
• Year: 2004

We prove that the mimetic finite-difference discretizations of Laplace's equation converges on rough logically-rectangular grids with convex cells. Mimetic discretizations for the invariant operators' divergence, gradient, and curl satisfy exact discrete analogs of many of the important theorems of vector calculus. The mimetic discretization of the Laplacian is given by the composition of the discrete divergence and gradient. We first construct a mimetic discretization on a single cell by geometrically constructing inner products for discrete scalar and vector fields, then constructing a finite-volume discrete divergence, and then constructing a discrete gradient that is consistent with the discrete divergence theorem. This construction is then extended to the global grid. We demonstrate the convergence for the two-dimensional Laplace equation with Dirichlet boundary conditions on grids with a lower bound on the angles in the cell corners and an upper bound on the cell aspect ratios. The best convergence rate to be expected is first order, which is what we prove. The techniques developed apply to far more general initial boundary-value problems.