Duality-based Asymptotic-Preserving method for highly anisotropic diffusion equations

Abstract: The present paper introduces an efficient and accurate numerical scheme for the solution of a highly anisotropic elliptic equation, the anisotropy direction being given by a variable vector field. This scheme is based on an asymptotic preserving reformulation of the original system, permitting an accurate resolution independently of the anisotropy strength and without the need of a mesh adapted to this anisotropy. The counterpart of this original procedure is the larger system size, enlarged by adding auxiliary variables and Lagrange multipliers. This Asymptotic-Preserving method generalizes the method investigated in a previous paper [arXiv:0903.4984v2] to the case of an arbitrary anisotropy direction field.