A parameter-free dynamic diffusion method for advection–diffusion–reaction problems

Abstract In this paper, we present a two-scale finite element formulation, named Dynamic Diffusion (DD), for advection–diffusion–reaction problems. By decomposing the velocity field in coarse and subgrid scales, the latter is used to determine the smallest amount of artificial diffusion to minimize the coarse-scale kinetic energy. This is done locally and dynamically, by imposing some constraints on the resolved scale solution, yielding a parameter-free consistent method. The subgrid scale space is defined by using bubble functions, whose degrees of freedom are locally eliminated in favor of the degrees of freedom that live on the resolved scales. Convergence tests on a two-dimensional example are reported, yielding optimal rates. In addition, numerical experiments show that DD method is robust for a wide scope of application problems.