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Boris Vexler

Publications and source records attributed to Boris Vexler.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2025

Fully discrete error analysis of finite element discretizations of time-dependent Stokes equations in a stream-function formulation

In this paper we establish best approximation type error estimates for the fully discrete Galerkin solutions of the time-dependent Stokes problem using the stream-function formulation. For the time discretization we use the discontinuous Galerkin method of arbitrary degree, whereas we present the space discretization in a general framework. This makes our result applicable for a wide variety of space discretization methods, provided some Galerkin orthogonality conditions are satisfied. As an example, conformal $C^1$ and $C^0$ interior penalty methods are covered by our analysis. The results do not require any additional regularity assumptions beyond the natural regularity given by the domain and data and can be used for optimal control problems.

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arXiv2025

Optimal Control of the Navier-Stokes equations via Pressure Boundary Conditions

In this work we study an optimal control problem subject to the instationary Navier-Stokes equations, where the control enters via an inhomogeneous Neumann/Do-Nothing boundary condition. Despite the Navier-Stokes equations with these boundary conditions not being well-posed for large times and/or data, we obtain wellposedness of the optimal control problem by choosing a proper tracking type term. In order to discuss the regularity of the optimal control, state and adjoint state, we present new results on $L^2(I;H^2(\Omega))$ regularity of solutions to a Stokes problem with mixed inhomogeneous boundary conditions.

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arXiv2024

A priori error estimates for finite element discretization of semilinear elliptic equations with non-Lipschitz nonlinearities

In this paper we develop numerical analysis for finite element discretization of semilinear elliptic equations with potentially non-Lipschitz nonlinearites. The nonlinearity is essecially assumed to be continuous and monotonically decreasing including the case of non-Lipschitz or even non-H\"older continuous nonlinearities. For a direct discretization (without any regularization) with linear finite elements we derive error estimates with respect to various norms and illustrate these results with a numerical example.

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arXiv2024

Numerical Analysis for Neumann Optimal Control Problems on Convex Polyhedral Domains

This paper is concerned with finite element error estimates for Neumann boundary control problems posed on convex and polyhedral domains. Different discretization concepts are considered and for each optimal discretization error estimates are established. In particular, for a full discretization with piecewise linear and globally continuous functions for the control and standard linear finite elements for the state optimal convergence rates for the controls are proven which solely depend on the largest interior edge angle. To be more precise, below the critical edge angle of $2\pi/3$, a convergence rate of two (times a log-factor) can be achieved for the discrete controls in the $L^2$-norm on the boundary. For larger interior edge angles the convergence rates are reduced depending on their size, which is due the impact of singular (domain dependent) terms in the solution. The results are comparable to those for the two dimensional case. However, new techniques in this context are used to prove the estimates on the boundary which also extend to the two dimensional case. Moreover, it is shown that the discrete states converge with a rate of two in the $L^2$-norm in the domain independent of the interior edge angles, i.e. for any convex and polyhedral domain. It is remarkable that this not only holds for a full discretization using piecewise linear and globally continuous functions for the control, but also for a full discretization using piecewise constant functions for the control, where the discrete controls only converge with a rate of one in the $L^2$-norm on the boundary at best. At the end, the theoretical results are confirmed by several numerical experiments.

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arXiv2024

A priori error estimates for optimal control problems governed by the transient Stokes equations and subject to state constraints pointwise in time

In this paper, we consider a state constrained optimal control problem governed by the transient Stokes equations. The state constraint is given by an L2 functional in space, which is required to fulfill a pointwise bound in time. The discretization scheme for the Stokes equations consists of inf-sup stable finite elements in space and a discontinuous Galerkin method in time, for which we have recently established best approximation type error estimates. Using these error estimates, for the discrete control problem we establish error estimates and as a by-product we show an improved regularity for the optimal control. We complement our theoretical analysis with numerical results.

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arXiv2024

Numerical Analysis for Dirichlet Optimal Control Problems on Convex Polyhedral Domains

In this paper error analysis for finite element discretizations of Dirichlet boundary control problems is developed. For the first time, optimal discretization error estimates are established in the case of three dimensional polyhedral and convex domains. The convergence rates solely depend on the size of largest interior edge angle. These results are comparable to those for the two dimensional case. However, the approaches from the two dimensional setting are not directly extendable such that new techniques have to be used. The theoretical results are confirmed by numerical experiments.

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arXiv2023

Error estimates for finite element discretizations of the instationary Navier-Stokes equations

In this work we consider the two dimensional instationary Navier-Stokes equations with homogeneous Dirichlet/no-slip boundary conditions. We show error estimates for the fully discrete problem, where a discontinuous Galerkin method in time and inf-sup stable finite elements in space are used. Recently, best approximation type error estimates for the Stokes problem in the $L^\infty(I;L^2(\Omega))$, $L^2(I;H^1(\Omega))$ and $L^2(I;L^2(\Omega))$ norms have been shown. The main result of the present work extends the error estimate in the $L^\infty(I;L^2(\Omega))$ norm to the Navier-Stokes equations, by pursuing an error splitting approach and an appropriate duality argument. In order to discuss the stability of solutions to the discrete primal and dual equations, a specially tailored discrete Gronwall lemma is presented. The techniques developed towards showing the $L^\infty(I;L^2(\Omega))$ error estimate, also allow us to show best approximation type error estimates in the $L^2(I;H^1(\Omega))$ and $L^2(I;L^2(\Omega))$ norms, which complement this work.

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arXiv2023

$L^2(I;H^1(\Omega))$ and $L^2(I;L^2(\Omega))$ best approximation type error estimates for Galerkin solutions of transient Stokes problems

In this paper we establish best approximation type estimates for the fully discrete Galerkin solutions of transient Stokes problem in $L^2(I;L^2(\Omega)^d)$ and $L^2(I;H^1(\Omega)^d)$ norms. These estimates fill the gap in the error analysis of the transient Stokes problems and have a number of applications. The analysis naturally extends to inhomogeneous parabolic problems. The best type $L^2(I;H^1(\Omega))$ error estimates seems to be new even for scalar parabolic problems.

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arXiv2023

Fully Discrete Pointwise Smoothing Error Estimates for Measure Valued Initial Data

In this paper we analyze a homogeneous parabolic problem with initial data in the space of regular Borel measures. The problem is discretized in time with a discontinuous Galerkin scheme of arbitrary degree and in space with continuous finite elements of orders one or two. We show parabolic smoothing results for the continuous, semidiscrete and fully discrete problems. Our main results are interior $L^\infty$ error estimates for the evaluation at the endtime, in cases where the initial data is supported in a subdomain. In order to obtain these, we additionally show interior $L^\infty$ error estimates for $L^2$ initial data and quadratic finite elements, which extends the corresponding result previously established by the authors for linear finite elements.

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arXiv2021

Fully discrete best approximation type estimates in $L^{\infty}(I;L^2(Ω)^d)$ for finite element discretizations of the transient Stokes equations

In this article we obtain an optimal best approximation type result for fully discrete approximations of the transient Stokes problem. For the time discretization we use the discontinuous Galerkin method and for the spatial discretization we use standard finite elements for the Stokes problem satisfying the discrete inf-sup condition. The analysis uses the technique of discrete maximal parabolic regularity. The results require only natural assumptions on the data and do not assume any additional smoothness of the solutions.

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arXiv2020

A priori error estimates for the space-time finite element discretization of an optimal control problem governed by a coupled linear PDE-ODE system

In this paper we investigate a priori error estimates for the space-time Galerkin finite element discretization of an optimal control problem governed by a simplified linear gradient enhanced damage model. The model equations are of a special structure as the state equation consists of an elliptic PDE which has to be fulfilled at almost all times coupled with an ODE that has to hold true in almost all points in space. The state equation is discretized by a piecewise constant discontinuous Galerkin method in time and usual conforming linear finite elements in space. For the discretization of the control we employ the same discretization technique which turns out to be equivalent to a variational discretization approach. We provide error estimates of optimal order both for the discretization of the state equation as well as for the optimal control. Numerical experiments are added to illustrate the proven rates of convergence.

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arXiv2019

Optimal finite element error estimates for an optimal control problem governed by the wave equation with controls of bounded variation

This work discusses the finite element discretization of an optimal control problem for the linear wave equation with time-dependent controls of bounded variation. The main focus lies on the convergence analysis of the discretization method. The state equation is discretized by a space-time finite element method. The controls are not discretized. Under suitable assumptions optimal convergence rates for the error in the state and control variable are proven. Based on a conditional gradient method the solution of the semi-discretized optimal control problem is computed. The theoretical convergence rates are confirmed in a numerical example.

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arXiv2019

Global and local pointwise error estimates for finite element approximations to the Stokes problem on convex polyhedra

The main goal of the paper is to show new stability and localization results for the finite element solution of the Stokes system in $W^{1,\infty}$ and $L^{\infty}$ norms under standard assumptions on the finite element spaces on quasi-uniform meshes in two and three dimensions. Although interior error estimates are well-developed for the elliptic problem, they appear to be new for the Stokes system on unstructured meshes. To obtain these results we extend previously known stability estimates for the Stokes system using regularized Green's functions.

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arXiv2019

Finite element error estimates for one-dimensional elliptic optimal control by BV functions

We consider an optimal control problem governed by a one-dimensional elliptic equation that involves univariate functions of bounded variation as controls. For the discretization of the state equation we use linear finite elements and for the control discretization we analyze two strategies. First, we use variational discretization of the control and show that the $L^2$- and $L^\infty$-error for the state and the adjoint state are of order ${\mathcal O}(h^2)$ and that the $L^1$-error of the control behaves like ${\mathcal O}(h^2)$, too. These results rely on a structural assumption that implies that the optimal control of the original problem is piecewise constant and that the adjoint state has nonvanishing first derivative at the jump points of the control. If, second, piecewise constant control discretization is used, we obtain $L^2$-error estimates of order $\mathcal{O}(h)$ for the state and $W^{1,\infty}$-error estimates of order $\mathcal{O}(h)$ for the adjoint state. Under the same structural assumption as before we derive an $L^1$-error estimate of order $\mathcal{O}(h)$ for the control. We discuss optimization algorithms and provide numerical results for both discretization schemes indicating that the error estimates are optimal.

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arXiv2019

A sparse control approach to optimal sensor placement in PDE-constrained parameter estimation problems

We present a systematic approach to the optimal placement of finitely many sensors in order to infer a finite-dimensional parameter from point evaluations of the solution of an associated parameter-dependent elliptic PDE. The quality of the corresponding least squares estimator is quantified by properties of the asymptotic covariance matrix depending on the distribution of the measurement sensors. We formulate a design problem where we minimize functionals related to the size of the corresponding confidence regions with respect to the position and number of pointwise measurements. The measurement setup is modeled by a positive Borel measure on the spatial experimental domain resulting in a convex optimization problem. For the algorithmic solution a class of accelerated conditional gradient methods in measure space is derived, which exploits the structural properties of the design problem to ensure convergence towards sparse solutions. Convergence properties are presented and the presented results are illustrated by numerical experiments.

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arXiv2019

Numerical Analysis of Sparse Initial Data Identification for Parabolic Problems

In this paper we consider a problem of initial data identification from the final time observation for homogeneous parabolic problems. It is well-known that such problems are exponentially ill-posed due to the strong smoothing property of parabolic equations. We are interested in a situation when the initial data we intend to recover is known to be sparse, i.e. its support has Lebesgue measure zero. We formulate the problem as an optimal control problem and incorporate the information on the sparsity of the unknown initial data into the structure of the objective functional. In particular, we are looking for the control variable in the space of regular Borel measures and use the corresponding norm as a regularization term in the objective functional. This leads to a convex but non-smooth optimization problem. For the discretization we use continuous piecewise linear finite elements in space and discontinuous Galerkin finite elements of arbitrary degree in time. For the general case we establish error estimates for the state variable. Under a certain structural assumption, we show that the control variable consists of a finite linear combination of Dirac measures. For this case we obtain error estimates for the locations of Dirac measures as well as for the corresponding coefficients. The key to the numerical analysis are the sharp smoothing type pointwise finite element error estimates for homogeneous parabolic problems, which are of independent interest. Moreover, we discuss an efficient algorithmic approach to the problem and show several numerical experiments illustrating our theoretical results.

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arXiv2018

Numerical simulation of transport in porous media: some problems from micro to macro scale

This paper deals with simulation of flow and transport in porous media such as transport of groundwater contaminants. We first discuss how macro scale equations are derived and which terms have to be closed by models. The transport of tracers is strongly influenced by pore scale velocity structure and large scale inhomogeneities in the permeability field. The velocity structure on the pore scale is investigated by direct numerical simulations of the 3D velocity field in a random sphere pack. The velocity probability density functions are strongly skewed, including some negative velocities. The large probability for very small velocities might be the reason for non-Fickian dispersion in the initial phase of contaminant transport. We present a method to determine large scale distributions of the permeability field from point-wise velocity measurements. The adjoint-based optimisation algorithm delivers fully satisfying agreement between input and estimated permeability fields. Finally numerical methods for convection dominated tracer transports are investigated from a theoretical point of view. It is shown that high order Finite Element Methods can reduce or even eliminate non-physical oscillations in the solution without introducing additional numerical diffusivity.

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