SALIENT POINTS UNDER

DISCUSSION
What is DG-FEM in general ??
How it is different from the Continuous Galerkin FEM?
Understanding DG-FEM through a scalar conservation
law
Application of DG-FEM to plane stress state/plane strain
state problems

What is DG-FEM in general ??

A Discontinuous Galerkin is a method in which piecewise
discontinuous functions (these are local in nature) are
involved for constructing approximate solution of considered
problem.
In this method, the continuity across the elements within the
considered problem is relaxed (or in other words, the
necessity of continuity is not ensured) whereas in Continuous
Galerkin method, the continuity between the elements is
maintained to ensure inter element compatibility.

HOW IT IS DIFFERENT FROM

CLASSICAL FEM ??
The main idea of this method is that its field variable (e.g.
if it is a thermo-elastic problem, then temperature is the
field variable and thermal stress, thermal strain and
deformation are the effects) and its derivatives or both are
considered discontinuous across the element boundaries.
DG-FEM uses the advantage of both FEM and FDM (Finite
Difference Method)
No need to build a global stiffness matrix/mass matrix
unlike FEM

DIFFERENCE B/N CG-FEM AND

DG-FEM:-

PURELY CONTINUOUS ELEMENTS

ELEMENTS

PURELY DISCONTINUOUS

DG-FEM - CLASSIFICATION
DG

Discontinuo
FEM us Galerkin
Method

Interior Penalty
Method (for
elliptical and
parabolic
functions)

TWO DIRECTIONS OF DG-FEM

Penalty
parameter is
used to deal
with the inter
element
boundaries

Dirchlet
Boundary
conditions are
used

THEIR SIGNIFICANCE

DG-FEM for
hyperbolic
functions

Approximation
solution is
constructed
element wise

NUMERICAL
FLUX is used for
defining at
element
boundaries

UNDERSTANDING DG-FEM THROUGH AN

EXAMPLE OF SCALAR CONSERVATION LAW:Between two elements, local information is available, and also along the
intersection of the elements.
Union of these intersections is called TRACE of the element.
Along the trace, at any physical location, two solutions are possible.
We understand DGFEM through the following example.
Scalar conservation law, subjected to following initial and boundary
conditions respectively

UNDERSTANDING DG-FEM THROUGH AN

EXAMPLE OF SCALAR CONSERVATION LAW:Local Solution is expressed as

The solution is expressed as a modal representation, and as well as nodal

expression
Global solution is the direct sum of all the K local polynomial solutions.

The weak form and the strong form of the above conservation law is
described here.

WEAK FORM : The residual/ weak form of the equation is written as shown below :-

Integration of the above residual, we obtain the weak form as

Here, one thing to notice is that, RHS is the boundary domain, so at the
boundary, since we have multiple values of approximation solution, we need to
choose which solution yields the results. Hence we introduce the concept of
numerical flux here.

NUMERICAL FLUX : The numerical flux is incorporated in the described weak form as shown
below
Numerical Flux

Integrating the weak form once again, we obtain the strong form which is
represented as shown below

MASS AND STIFFNESS MATRICES

: If we choose the modal solution, i.e

the corresponding semi discrete weak statement is obtained as

which is also termed as the classical local Discontinuous Galerkin formulation in weak
form
The mass and stiffness matrices are given as

MASS AND STIFFNESS MATRICES

: If we choose the nodal solution, which uses the Lagrange interpolating
polynomial, i.e.

The corresponding semi discrete weak statement is obtained as

The corresponding mass and stiffness matrices are obtained as

NEW TERMINOLOGY : Numerical Flux functions Central Flux and Upwind flux
At the element boundaries, since there is discontinuity, the
solution at these locations are also not unique. Hence, flux functions
define a value for approximation function at the boundaries.
The choice of numerical flux impacts the stability of the solution.
(There are several ways of defining a numerical flux and it depends
on the type of problem we are dealing with)
Jump Operators
Average Operators

NUMERICAL FLUX IN DETAIL : For most of the problems, the numerical flux is generally chosen as

If

, then it corresponds to Upwind Flux

If
, then it corresponds to Central Flux, which is average of the
two solutions at the
interfaces
The role of numerical flux is to ensure stability of the mathematical
formulation.

JUMP OPERATOR, AVERAGE

OPERATOR: Average Operator is defined as follows :-

Jump Operator is defined as follows:(First equation u being scalar, in the second equation u is a vector)

ADVANTAGES OF DG-FEM :Following are the important properties of DG-FEM : Solutions are piecewise smooth, often polynomial, but discontinuous at the
element interfaces
Boundary conditions and interface continuity and enforced only weakly.
All operators (jump, average) are local.
Schemes are well suited to variable order and element sizes, as all
information exchange is
across interfaces