Section: Overall Objectives

Overall Objectives

Together with the diffusion of scientific computing, there has been a recent and impressive increase of the demand for numerical methods. The problems to be addressed are everyday more complex and require specific numerical algorithms. The quality of the results has to be accurately assessed, so that in-silico experiments results can be trusted. Nowadays, producing such reliable numerical results goes way beyond the abilities of isolated researchers, and must be carried out by structured teams.

The topics addressed by the RAPSODI team belong to the broad theme of numerical methods for the approximation of solutions of systems of partial differential equations (PDEs). Besides standard convergence properties, a good numerical method for approximating a physical problem has to satisfy at least the following three criteria:

1. preservation at the discrete level of some crucial features of the solution, such as positivity of solutions, conservation of prescribed quantities (e.g., mass, the decay of physically motivated entropies, etc.);

2. provide accurate numerical approximations at a reasonable computational cost (and ultimately maximize the accuracy at a fixed computational effort);

3. robustness with respect to physical conditions: the computational cost for a given accuracy should be essentially insensitive to change of physical parameters.

We aim to develop methods fulfilling the above quality criteria for physical models which all display a dissipative behavior, and that are motivated by industrial collaborations or multidisciplinary projects. In particular, we have identified a couple of specific situations we plan to investigate: models from corrosion science (in the framework of nuclear waste repository) [1], low-frequency electromagnetism [10], and mechanics of complex inhomogeneous fluids arising in avalanches [6] or in porous media  [61].

Ideally, we should allow ourselves to design entirely new numerical methods. For some applications however (often in the context of industrial collaborations), the members of the team have to compose with existing codes. The numerical algorithms have thus to be optimized under this constraint.