Structure preserving discontinuous Galerkin approximation of a hyperbolic-parabolic system

Abstract: We study the numerical approximation of a coupled hyperbolic-parabolic system by a family of discontinuous Galerkin space-time finite element methods. The model is rewritten as a first-order evolutionary problem that is treated by the unified abstract solution theory of R. Picard. For the discretization in space, generalizations of the distribution gradient and divergence operators on broken polynomial spaces are defined. Since their skew-selfadjointness is perturbed by boundary surface integrals, adjustments are introduced such that the skew-selfadjointness of the first-order differential operator in space is recovered. Well-posedness of the fully discrete problem and error estimates for the discontinuous Galerkin approximation in space and time are proved.