AbstractIn this paper, we propose to use the interior functions of an hierarchical basis for high order BDMp elements to enforce the divergence-free condition of a magnetic field B approximated by the H(div)BDMp basis. The resulting constrained finite element method can be used to solve magnetic induction equation in MHD equations. The proposed procedure is based on the fact that the scalar (p–1)-th order polynomial space on each element can be decomposed as an orthogonal sum of the subspace defined by the divergence of the interior functions of the p-th order BDMp basis and the constant function. Therefore, the interior functions can be used to remove element-wise all higher order terms except the constant in the divergence error of the finite element solution of the B-field. The constant terms from each element can be then easily corrected using a first order H(div) basis globally. Numerical results for a 3-D magnetic induction equation show the effectiveness of the proposed method in enforcing divergence-free condition of the magnetic field.
Stable upwind schemes for the magnetic induction equation
