We consider numerical boundary conditions for high order finite difference schemes for solving convection-diffusion equations on arbitrary geometry. The two main difficulties for numerical boundary conditions in such situations are: (1) the wide stencil of the high order finite difference operator requires special treatment for a few ghost points near the boundary; (2) the physical boundary may not coincide with grid points in a Cartesian mesh and may intersect with the mesh in an arbitrary fashion. For purely convection equations, the so-called inverse Lax-Wendroff procedure, in which we convert the normal derivatives into the time derivatives and tangential derivatives along the physical boundary by using the equations, have been quite successful. In this paper, we extend this methodology to convection-diffusion equations. It turns out that this extension is non-trivial, because totally different boundary treatments are needed for the diffusion-dominated and the convection-dominated regimes. We design a careful combination of the boundary treatments for the two regimes and obtain a stable and accurate boundary condition for general convection-diffusion equations. We provide extensive numerical tests for one- and two-dimensional problems involving both scalar equations and systems, including the compressible Navier-Stokes equations, to demonstrate the good performance of our numerical boundary conditions.

The purpose of the present paper is the solution of the boundary value problems for minimal surfaces when the boundaries are not, or not entirely-fixed Jordan curves but are free to move on prescribed manifolds. At the same time I shall present modifications and simplifications of my previous solution of the Plateau' and Douglas' problem for fixed boundary curves and prescribed topological structure and incidentally discuss certain features of the problem in order to clarify its relation to the theory of conformal mapping. Though based on previous publications, the paper may, except for some references, be read independently.

No abstract uploaded!

Let $D={\mathbb H} \setminus \cup_{k=1}^N C_k$ be a standard slit domain where $\mathbb H$ is the upper half plane and $C_k$, $1\leq k\leq N$, are mutually disjoint horizontal line segments in $\HH$. Given a Jordan arc $\gamma\subset D$ starting at $\partial {\mathbb H},$ let $g_t$ be the unique conformal map from $D\setminus \gamma[0,t]$ onto a standard slit domain $D_t$ satisfying the hydrodynamic normalization. We prove that $g_t$ satisfies an ODE with the kernel on its righthand side being the complex Poisson kernel of the Brownian motion with darning (BMD) for $D_t$, generalizing the chordal Loewner equation for the simply connected domain $D={\mathbb H}.$ Such a generalization has been obtained by Y. Komatu in the case of circularly slit annuli and by R. O. Bauer and R. M. Friedrich in the present chordal case, but only in the sense of the left derivative in $t$. We establish the differentiability of $g_t$ in $t$ to make the equation a genuine ODE. To this end, we first derive the continuity of $g_t(z)$ in $t$ with a certain uniformity in $z$ from a probabilistic expression of $\Im g_t(z)$ in terms of the BMD for $D$, which is then combined with a Lipschitz continuity of the complex Poisson kernel under the perturbation of standard slit domains to get the desired differentiability.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1991. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 48).