CONVECTION TREATMENT USING SPECTRAL ELEMENTS OF DIFFERENT ORDER

We present here our experiences with using the spectral element methodology to solve convection-dominated problems. Different polynomial approximations are used inside the spectral elements and both conforming and non-conforming interface conditions are investigated. The three spectral element methods that we explore can all be considered to be special cases of the more general mortar element method. We compare the methods for solving incompressible fluid flow and heat transfer problems. Particular attention is given to the convection treatment. The numerical results can be strongly dependent upon whether a conforming or a non-conforming method is used as well as the particular form of the discrete convection operator (convective form versus skew-symmetric form).