Analysis of a fully discretized FDM-FEM scheme for solving thermo-elastic-damage coupled nonlinear PDE systems

Abstract: In this paper, we consider a nonlinear PDE system governed by a parabolic heat equation coupled in a nonlinear way with a hyperbolic momentum equation describing the behavior of a displacement field coupled with a nonlinear elliptic equation based on an internal damage variable. We present a numerical scheme based on a low-order Galerkin finite element method (FEM) for the space discretization of the time-dependent nonlinear PDE system and an implicit finite difference method (FDM) to discretize in the direction of the time variable. Moreover, we present a priori estimates for the exact and discrete solutions for the pointwise-in-time $L^2$-norm. Based on the a priori estimates, we rigorously prove the convergence of the solutions of the fully discretized system to the exact solutions. Denoting the properties of the internal parameters, we find the order of convergence concerning the discretization parameters.