Extending FEniCS to Work in Higher Dimensions Using Tensor Product Finite Elements

Abstract: We present a method to extend the finite element library FEniCS to solve problems with domains in dimensions above three by constructing tensor product finite elements. This methodology only requires that the high dimensional domain is structured as a Cartesian product of two lower dimensional subdomains. In this study we consider Dirichlet problems for scalar linear partial differential equations, though the methodology can be extended to non-linear problems. The utilization of tensor product finite elements allows us to construct a global system of linear algebraic equations that only relies on the finite element infrastructure of the lower dimensional subdomains contained in FEniCS. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our methodology in four distinctive test cases. The first test case is a Poisson equation posed in a four dimensional domain which is a Cartesian product of two unit squares solved using the classical Galerkin finite element method. The second test case is the wave equation in space-time, where the computational domain is a Cartesian product of a two dimensional space grid and a one dimensional time interval. In this second case we also employ the Galerkin method. The third test case is an advection dominated advection-diffusion equation where the global domain is a Cartesian product of two one dimensional intervals in which the streamline upwind Petrov-Galerkin method is applied to ensure discrete stability. The final test case uses the Galerkin approach to solve a Poisson problem on a Cartesian product of two intervals with a spatially varying, non-separable diffusivity term. In all cases, a p=1 basis is used and optimal L^2 convergence rates of order h^{p+1} of the errors are achieved with respect to h refinement