In this paper, we consider an interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method for the time-dependent Maxwell’s equations in cold plasma. In Huang and Li (J. Sci. Comput., 42 (2009), 321–340), for both semi and fully discrete DG schemes, we proved error estimates which are optimal in the energy norm, but sub-optimal in the L2-norm. Here by filling this gap, we show that these schemes are optimally convergent in the L2-norm on quasi-uniform tetrahedral meshes if the solution is sufficiently smooth.

Jiang et al. (Transportation Research Part B, 2011, 45(2), 343-363) proposed a predictive continuum dynamic user-optimal (PDUO-C) model to investigate the dynamic characteristics of traffic flow and the corresponding route-choice behavior of travelers. The modeled region is a dense urban city, which is arbitrary in shape and has a single central business district (CBD). However, we argue that the model is not well posed due to an inconsistency in the route-choice strategy. To overcome this inconsistency, we revisit the PDUO-C problem, and construct an improved path-choice strategy. The improved model consists of a conservation law to govern the density, in which the flow direction is determined by the improved path-choice strategy, and a Hamilton-Jacobi equation to compute the total travel cost. The simultaneous satisfaction of both equations can be treated as a fixed-point problem. A self-adaptive method of successive averages (MSA) is proposed to solve this fixed-point problem. This method can automatically determine the optimal MSA step size using the least squares approach. Numerical examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model and the solution algorithm.

In this paper, we propose new spectral viscosity methods based on the generalized Hermite functions for the solution of nonlinear scalar conservation laws in the whole line. It is shown rigorously that these schemes converge to the unique entropy solution by using compensated compactness arguments, under some conditions. The numerical experiments of the inviscid Burger's equation support our result, and it verifies the reasonableness of the conditions.

In this paper, we discuss a general multiscale model reduction framework based on multiscale finite element methods. We give a brief overview of related multiscale methods. Due to page limitations, the overview focuses on a few related methods and is not intended to be comprehensive. We present a general adaptive multiscale model reduction framework, the Generalized Multiscale Finite Element Method. Besides the method's basic outline, we discuss some important ingredients needed for the method's success. We also discuss several applications. The proposed method allows performing local model reduction in the presence of high contrast and no scale separation.

We are interested in front propagation problems in the presence of obstacles. We extend a previous work (Bokanowski, Cheng and Shu 09}), to propose a simple and direct discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method adapted to such front propagation problems. We follow the formulation of Bokanowski et al. (Bokanowski_Forcadel_Zidani_2010), leading to a level set formulation driven by $\min(u_t + H(x,\nabla u), u-g(x))=0$, where $g(x)$ is an obstacle function. The DG scheme is motivated by the variational formulation when the Hamiltonian $H$ is a linear function of $\nabla u$, corresponding to linear convection problems in presence of obstacles. The scheme is then generalized to nonlinear equations, written in an explicit form. Stability analysis are performed for the linear case with Euler forward, a Heun scheme and a Runge-Kutta third order time discretization using the technique proposed in Zhang and Shu 2010. Several numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the robustness of the method. Finally, a narrow band approach is considered in order to reduce the computational cost.