In this paper, we apply the local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method to solve the classical Keller-Segel (KS) chemotaxis model. The exact solution of the KS chemotaxis model may exhibit blow-up patterns with certain initial conditions, and is not easy to approximate numerically. Moreover, it has been proved that there exists a definition of free energy of the KS system which dissipates with respect to time. We will construct a consistent numerical energy and prove the energy dissipation with the LDG discretization. Several numerical experiments in one and two space dimensions will be given. Especially, for solutions with blow-up (converge to Dirac delta functions), the densities of KS model are computed to be strictly positive in the numerical experiments and the energies are also numerically observed to be strictly positive and decreasing as are seen in the figures. Therefore, the scheme is stable for the KS model with blow-up solutions.

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the stability and error estimates of the local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) methods coupled with implicit-explicit (IMEX) time discretization schemes, for solving one-dimensional convection-diffusion equations with a nonlinear convection. Both Runge-Kutta and multi-step IMEX methods are considered. By the aid of the energy method, we show that the IMEX LDG schemes are unconditionally stable for the nonlinear problems, in the sense that the time-step $\dt$ is only required to be upper-bounded by a positive constant which depends on the flow velocity and the diffusion coefficient, but is independent of the mesh size $h$. We also give optimal error estimates for the IMEX LDG schemes, under the same temporal condition, if a monotone numerical flux is adopted for the convection. Numerical experiments are given to verify our main results.

We study front speeds of curvature and strain G-equations arising in turbulent combustion. These G-equations are HamiltonJacobi type level set partial differential equations (PDEs) with non-coercive Hamiltonians and degenerate nonlinear second order diffusion. The Hamiltonian of a strain G-equation is also non-convex. Numerical computation is performed based on monotone discretization and weighted essentially nonoscillatory (WENO) approximation of transformed G-equations on a fixed periodic domain. The advection field in the computation is a two dimensional Hamiltonian flow consisting of a periodic array of counter-rotating vortices, or cellular flows. Depending on whether the evolution is predominantly in the hyperbolic or parabolic regimes, suitable explicit and semi-implicit time stepping methods are chosen. The turbulent flame speeds are computed as the linear growth rates of large time solutions. A

In this paper, we study the superconvergence behavior of discontinuous Galerkin methods using upwind numerical fluxes for one-dimensional linear hyperbolic equations with degenerate variable coefficients. The study establishes superconvergence results for the flux function approximation as well as for the DG solution itself. To be more precise, we first prove that the DG flux function is superconvergent towards a particular flux function of the exact solution, with an order of $O(h^{k+2})$, when piecewise polynomials of degree $k$ are used. We then prove that the highest superconvergence rate of the DG solution itself is $O(h^{k+\frac 32})$ as the variable coefficient degenerates or achieves the value zero in the domain. As byproducts, we obtain superconvergence properties for the DG solution and the DG flux function at special points and for cell averages. All theoretical findings are confirmed by numerical experiments.

Simulating complex processes in fractured media requires some type of model reduction. Well-known approaches include multi-continuum techniques, which have been commonly used in approximating subgrid effects for flow and transport in fractured media. Our goal in this paper is to (1) show a relation between multi-continuum approaches and Generalized Multiscale Finite Element Method (GMsFEM) and (2) to discuss coupling these approaches for solving problems in complex multiscale fractured media. The GMsFEM, a systematic approach, constructs multiscale basis functions via local spectral decomposition in pre-computed snapshot spaces. We show that GMsFEM can automatically identify separate fracture networks via local spectral problems. We discuss the relation between these basis functions and continuums in multi-continuum methods. The GMsFEM can automatically detect each