A New Nonlinear Two-Point Flux Approximation Method for Solving the Anisotropic Diffusion Equation with Reduced Violations of the Discrete Maximum/Minimum Principle

Summary A class of monotone cell-centered nonlinear finite-volume methods has been proposed in the past decade to solve the anisotropic diffusion equation. The nonlinear two-point flux approximation (TPFA) (NTPFA) method preserves the nonnegativity of the solution values but can violate the discrete maximum/minimum principle (DMP). To enforce DMP, the nonlinear multipoint flux approximation (NMPFA) method ought to be used. In this work, we propose a novel NTPFA method that can reduce the severity of DMP violations significantly compared with the standard NTPFA method. The new formulation uses conormal decomposition for the construction of the one-sided fluxes. To define the unique flux through a connection between two cells, we choose a convex combination of the two one-sided fluxes such that the absolute differences of the magnitudes of the two transmissibility terms associated with the two neighboring cells are minimized, thus bringing the discrete coefficient matrix closer to having the zero row-sum property. Numerical experiments are conducted to test the performance of the new NTPFA method. The results demonstrate that the new scheme has comparable convergence order for both the solution and the flux compared with the standard NTPFA method or the classical multi-point flux approximation (MPFA-O) method. Moreover, the new NTPFA formulation shows marked improvements over the standard NTPFA in terms of reducing DMP violations. However, depending on the specific problem configuration, our new NTPFA formulation can lead to a system of nonlinear equations that is more difficult to solve.