Stability Issues of Entropy-Stable and/or Split-form High-order Schemes

The focus of the present research is on the analysis of local energy stability of high-order (including split-form) summation-by-parts methods, with e.g. two-point entropy-conserving fluxes, approximating non-linear conservation laws. Our main finding is that local energy stability, i.e., the numerical growth rate does not exceed the growth rate of the continuous problem, is not guaranteed even when the scheme is non-linearly stable and that this may have adverse implications for simulation results. We show that entropy-conserving two-point fluxes are inherently locally energy unstable, as they can be dissipative or anti-dissipative. Unfortunately, these fluxes are at the core of many commonly used high-order entropy-stable extensions, including split-form summation-by-parts discontinuous Galerkin spectral element methods (or spectral collocation methods). For the non-linear Burgers equation, we further demonstrate numerically that such schemes cause exponential growth of errors during the simulation. Furthermore, we encounter a similar abnormal behaviour for the compressible Euler equations, for a smooth exact solution of a density wave. Finally, for the same case, we demonstrate numerically that other commonly known split-forms, such as the Kennedy and Gruber splitting, are also locally energy unstable.

Fully-discrete, decoupled, second-order time-accurate and energy stable finite element numerical scheme of the Cahn-Hilliard binary surfactant model confined in the Hele-Shaw cell

We consider the numerical approximation of the binary fluid surfactant phase-field model confined in a Hele-Shaw cell, where the system includes two coupled Cahn-Hilliard equations and Darcy equations. We develop a fully-discrete finite element scheme with some desired characteristics, including linearity, second-order time accuracy, decoupling structure, and unconditional energy stability. The scheme is constructed by combining the projection method for the Darcy equation, the quadratization approach for the nonlinear energy potential, and a decoupling method of using a trivial ODE built upon the ``{zero-energy-contribution}" feature. The advantage of this scheme is that not only can all variables be calculated in a decoupled manner, but each equation has only constant coefficients at each time step. We strictly prove that the scheme satisfies the unconditional energy stability and give a detailed implementation process. Various numerical examples are further carried out to prove the effectiveness of the scheme, in which the benchmark Saffman-Taylor fingering instability problems in various flow regimes are simulated to verify the weakening effects of surfactant on surface tension.