ON A NOVEL MESH FOR THE REGULAR BOUNDARY-LAYERS ARISING IN ADVECTION-DOMINATED TRANSPORT IN 2 DIMENSIONS

Upwind finite difference operators on uniform meshes are well known to be unsuitable for the numerical solution of singularly perturbed partial differential equations, in the sense that, in the neighbourhood of the boundary layers, the error in the numerical approximation may increase as the mesh is refilled. Recently, on the other hand, it has been predicted theoretically that the use of upwind finite difference operators on specially designed piecewise uniform meshes guarantees the decrease of the nodal error to zero as the number of mesh elements increases. In the paper the general theorem is quoted and its prediction is validated by numerical experiment for a specific linear advection-dominated transport equation in two dimensions. Experimental values of the convergence rate are obtained, which also agree with the theoretical estimates.