Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin method with a simple and compact Hermite WENO limiter

Abstract In this paper, we propose a new type of weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) limiter, which belongs to the class of Hermite WENO (HWENO) limiters, for the RungeKutta discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG) methods solving hyperbolic conservation laws. This new HWENO limiter is a modification of the simple WENO limiter proposed recently by Zhong and Shu [32]. Both limiters use information of the DG solutions only from the target cell and its immediate neighboring cells, thus maintaining the original compactness of the DG scheme. The goal of both limiters is to obtain high order accuracy and non-oscillatory properties simultaneously. The main novelty of the new HWENO limiter in this paper is to reconstruct the polynomial on the target cell in a least square fashion while the simple WENO limiter [32] is to use the entire polynomial of the original DG solutions in the neighboring cells with an addition of a constant for conservation. This modification improves the robustness in the computation of problems with strong shocks or contact discontinuities, without changing the compact stencil of the DG scheme. Numerical results for both one and two dimensional equations including Euler equations of compressible gas dynamics are provided to illustrate the viability of this modified limiter.