ALE-SUPG finite element method for convection-diffusion problems in time-dependent domains: Conservative form

Abstract: A Streamline Upwind Petrov-Galerkin (SUPG) finite element method for transient convection-diffusion-reaction equation in time-dependent domains is proposed. In particular, a convection dominated transient scalar problem is considered. The time-dependent domain is handled by the arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) approach, whereas the SUPG finite element method is used for the spatial discretization. Further, the first order backward Euler and the second order Crank-Nicolson methods are used for the temporal discretization. It is shown that the stability of the semidiscrete (continuous in time) conservative ALE-SUPG equation is independent of the mesh velocity, whereas the stability of the fully discrete problem is unconditionally stable for implicit Euler method and is only conditionally stable for Crank-Nicolson time discretization. Numerical results are presented to show the influence of the SUPG stabilization parameter in a time-dependent domain. Further, the proposed numerical scheme is applied to a boundary/layer problem in a time-dependent domain.