Numerical analysis for time-dependent advection-diffusion problems with random discontinuous coefficients

Abstract

Subsurface flows are commonly modeled by advection-diffusion equations. Insufficient measurements or uncertain material procurement may be accounted for by random coefficients. To represent, for example, transitions in heterogeneous media, the parameters of the equation are spatially discontinuous. Specifically, a scenario with coupled advection- and diffusion coefficients that are modeled as sums of continuous random fields and discontinuous jump components are considered. For the numerical approximation of the solution, an adaptive, pathwise discretization scheme based on a Finite Element approach is introduced. To stabilize the numerical approximation and accelerate convergence, the discrete space-time grid is chosen with respect to the varying discontinuities in each sample of the coefficients, leading to a stochastic formulation of the Galerkin projection and the Finite Element basis.