Open Access

We consider the simulation of barotropic flow of gas in long pipes and pipe networks. Based on a Hamiltonian reformulation of the governing system, a fully discrete approximation scheme is proposed using mixed finite elements in space and an implicit Euler method in time. Assuming the existence of a smooth subsonic solution bounded away from vacuum, a full convergence analysis is presented based on relative energy estimates. Particular attention is paid to establishing error bounds that are uniform in the friction parameter. As a consequence, the method and results also cover the parabolic problem arising in the asymptotic large friction limit. The error estimates are derived in detail for a single pipe, but using appropriate coupling conditions and the particular structure of the problem and its discretization, the main results directly generalize to pipe networks. Numerical tests are presented for illustration.

We consider singularly perturbed convection-diffusion equations on one-dimensional networks (metric graphs) as well as the transport problems arising in the vanishing diffusion limit. Suitable coupling condition at inner vertices are derived that guarantee conservation of mass as well as dissipation of a mathematical energy which allows us to prove stability and well-posedness. For single intervals and appropriately specified initial conditions, it is well-known that the solutions of the convection-diffusion problem converge to that of the transport problem with order O(sqrt(eps)) in the L1(L2)- norm with diffusion eps -> 0. In this paper, we prove a corresponding result for problems on one-dimensional networks. The main difficulty in the analysis is that the number and type of coupling conditions changes in the singular limit which gives rise to additional boundary layers at the interior vertices of the network. Since the values of the solution at these network junctions are not known a-priori, the asymptotic analysis requires a delicate choice of boundary layer functions that allows to handle these interior layers.

This work deals with the analysis and numerical approximation of transport problems on networks. Appropriate coupling conditions are proposed that allow to establish well-posedness of the continuous problem by semigroup theory. A discontinuous Galerkin method is proposed for the space discretization and its well-posedness and order optimal convergence rates are proven. In addition, the time discretization by the implicit Euler method is investigated.

We consider the optimal control of a nonlinear hyperbolic system of balance laws on a one-dimensional network which arises in the context of gas transport in pipeline systems. State constraints, which are required for the safe operation of the system, are incorporated by a barrier method. We discuss the well-posedness of the governing system of partial differential-algebraic equations and investigate the existence of minimizers. For the numerical solution, we then consider the approximation of the state equation by mixed finite elements in space and a particular linear implicit time integration scheme that can be interpreted as a discontinuous Galerkin approximation. We establish well- posedness of this discretization scheme and prove the existence of minimizers for the corresponding discretized optimal control problem and discuss its numerical solution by a projected Gauß-Newton method. The efficient realization of the Jacobian and Hessian of the quadratic approximations that have to be minimized in every iteration of the Gauß-Newton method can be obtained via the solution of discretized sensitivity and adjoint equations. These are obtained by formal differentiation and transposition of the Galerkin methods employed for the discretization of the state equations. All approximations obtained after discretization can thus be interpreted as functions on the continuous level and, since the functional analytic setting is not changed by the Galerkin discretization, we observe mesh independence of the resulting fully discrete methods. For illustration of our theoretical results and to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method, we present numerical results for two test problems that model typical situations that may arise in the daily operation of gas networks.

We consider the numerical approximation of acoustic wave propagation problems by mixed BDM(k+1)-P(k) finite elements on unstructured meshes. Optimal convergence of the discrete velocity and super-convergence of the pressure by one order are established. Based on these results, we propose a post-processing strategy that allows us to construct an improved pressure approximation from the numerical solution. Corresponding results are well-known for mixed finite element approximations of elliptic problems and we extend these analyses here to the hyperbolic problem under consideration. We also consider the subsequent time discretization by the Crank-Nicolson method and show that the analysis and the post-processing strategy can be generalized to the fully discrete schemes. Our proofs do not rely on duality arguments or inverse inequalities and the results therefore apply also for non-convex domains and non-uniform meshes.