Uniform-in-time convergence of numerical methods for non-linear degenerate parabolic equations

Gradient schemes is a framework that enables the unified convergence analysis of many numerical methods for elliptic and parabolic partial differential equations: conforming and non-conforming Finite Element, Mixed Finite Element and Finite Volume methods. We show here that this framework can be applied to a family of degenerate non-linear parabolic equations (which contain in particular the Richards’, Stefan’s and Leray–Lions’ models), and we prove a uniform-in-time strong-in-space convergence result for the gradient scheme approximations of these equations. In order to establish this convergence, we develop several discrete compactness tools for numerical approximations of parabolic models, including a discontinuous Ascoli-Arzelà theorem and a uniform-in-time weak-in-space discrete Aubin-Simon theorem. The model’s degeneracies, which occur both in the time and space derivatives, also requires us to develop a discrete compensated compactness result. AMS Subject Classification: 65M12, 35K65, 46N40.