Geometric, Variational Discretization of Continuum Theories

This study derives geometric, variational discretizations of continuum theories arising in fluid dynamics, magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), and the dynamics of complex fluids. A central role in these discretizations is played by the geometric formulation of fluid dynamics, which views solutions to the governing equations for perfect fluid flow as geodesics on the group of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms of the fluid domain. Inspired by this framework, we construct a finite-dimensional approximation to the diffeomorphism group and its Lie algebra, thereby permitting a variational temporal discretization of geodesics on the spatially discretized diffeomorphism group. The extension to MHD and complex fluid flow is then made through an appeal to the theory of Euler-Poincaré systems with advection, which provides a generalization of the variational formulation of ideal fluid flow to fluids with one or more advected parameters. Upon deriving a family of structured integrators for these systems, we test their performance via a numerical implementation of the update schemes on a cartesian grid. Among the hallmarks of these new numerical methods are exact preservation of momenta arising from symmetries, automatic satisfaction of solenoidal constraints on vector fields, good long-term energy behavior, robustness with respect to the spatial and temporal resolution of the discretization, and applicability to irregular meshes.