For decades, the widely used finite difference method on staggered grids, also known as the marker and cell (MAC) method, has been one of the simplest and most effective numerical schemes for solving the Stokes equations and Navier–Stokes equations. Its superconvergence on uniform meshes has been observed by Nicolaides (SIAM J Numer Anal 29(6):1579–1591, 1992), but the rigorous proof is never given. Its behavior on non-uniform grids is not well studied, since most publications only consider uniform grids. In this work, we develop the MAC scheme on non-uniform rectangular meshes, and for the first time we theoretically prove that the superconvergence phenomenon (i.e., second order convergence in the L2 norm for both velocity and pressure) holds true for the MAC method on non-uniform rectangular meshes. With a careful and accurate analysis of various sources of errors, we observe that even though the local truncation errors are only first order in terms of mesh size, the global errors after summation are second order due to the amazing cancellation of local errors. This observation leads to the elegant superconvergence analysis even with non-uniform meshes. Numerical results are given to verify our theoretical analysis.

In this paper, we apply the local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method to 2D Keller--Segel (KS) chemotaxis model. We improve the results upon (Y. Epshteyn and A. Kurganov, SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis, 47 (2008), 368-408) and give optimal rate of convergence under special finite element spaces before the blow-up occurs (the exact solutions are smooth). Moreover, to construct physically relevant numerical approximations, we consider $P^1$ LDG scheme and develop a positivity-preserving limiter to the scheme, extending the idea in (Y. Zhang, X. Zhang and C.-W. Shu, Journal of Computational Physics, 229 (2010), 8918-8934). With this limiter, we can prove the $L^1$-stability of the numerical scheme. Numerical experiments are performed to demonstrate the good performance of the positivity-preserving LDG scheme. Moreover, it is known that the chemotaxis model will yield blow-up solutions under certain initial conditions. We numerically demonstrate how to find the approximate blow-up time by using the $L^2$-norm of the $L^1$-stable numerical solution.

In this paper, we discuss high order finite difference weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) schemes, coupled with total variation diminishing (TVD) Runge-Kutta (RK) temporal integration, for solving the semilinear hyperbolic system of a correlated random walk model describing movement of animals and cells in biology. Since the solutions to this system are non-negative, we discuss a positivity-preserving limiter without compromising accuracy. Analysis is performed to justify the maintanance of third order spatial / temporal accuracy when the limiters are applied to a third order finite difference scheme and third order TVD-RK time discretization for solving this model. Numerical results are also provided to demonstrate these methods up to fifth order accuracy.

In earlier work, Maire developed a class of cell-centered Lagrangian schemes for solving Euler equations of compressible gas dynamics in cylindrical coordinates. These schemes use a node-based discretization of the numerical fluxes. The control volume version has several distinguished properties, including the conservation of mass, momentum and total energy and compatibility with the geometric conservation law (GCL). However it also has a limitation in that it cannot preserve spherical symmetry for one-dimensional spherical flow. An alternative is also given to use the first order area-weighted approach which can ensure spherical symmetry, at the price of sacrificing conservation of momentum. In this paper, we apply the methodology proposed in our recent work to the first order control volume scheme of Maire to obtain the spherical symmetry property. The modified scheme can preserve one-dimensional spherical symmetry in a two-dimensional cylindrical geometry when computed on an equal-angle-zoned initial grid, and meanwhile it maintains its original good properties such as conservation and GCL. Several two-dimensional numerical examples in cylindrical coordinates are presented to demonstrate the good performance of the scheme in terms of symmetry, non-oscillation and robustness properties.

In applications such as astrophysics and inertial confinement fusion, there are many three-dimensional cylindrical-symmetric multi-material problems which are usually simulated by Lagrangian schemes in the two-dimensional cylindrical coordinates. For this type of simulation, a critical issue for the schemes is to keep spherical symmetry in the cylindrical coordinate system if the original physical problem has this symmetry. In the past decades, several Lagrangian schemes with such symmetry property have been developed, but all of them are only first order accurate. In this paper, we develop a second order cell-centered Lagrangian scheme for solving compressible Euler equations in cylindrical coordinates, based on the control volume discretizations, which is designed to have uniformly second order accuracy and capability to preserve one-dimensional spherical symmetry in a two-dimensional cylindrical geometry when computed on an equal-angle-zoned initial grid. The scheme maintains several good properties such as conservation for mass, momentum and total energy, and the geometric conservation law. Several two-dimensional numerical examples in cylindrical coordinates are presented to demonstrate the good performance of the scheme in terms of accuracy, symmetry, non-oscillation and robustness. The advantage of higher order accuracy is demonstrated in these examples.