Curl Constraint-Preserving Reconstruction and the Guidance it Gives for Mimetic Scheme Design

Several important PDE systems, like magnetohydrodynamics and computational electrodynamics, are known to support involutions where the divergence of a vector field evolves in divergence-free or divergence constraint-preserving fashion. Recently, new classes of PDE systems have emerged for hyperelasticity, compressible multiphase flows, so-called first-order reductions of the Einstein field equations, or a novel first-order hyperbolic reformulation of Schrödinger’s equation, to name a few, where the involution in the PDE supports curl-free or curl constraint-preserving evolution of a vector field. We study the problem of curl constraint-preserving reconstruction as it pertains to the design of mimetic finite volume (FV) WENO-like schemes for PDEs that support a curl-preserving involution. (Some insights into discontinuous Galerkin (DG) schemes are also drawn, though that is not the prime focus of this paper.) This is done for two- and three-dimensional structured mesh problems where we deliver closed form expressions for the reconstruction. The importance of multidimensional Riemann solvers in facilitating the design of such schemes is also documented. In two dimensions, a von Neumann analysis of structure-preserving WENO-like schemes that mimetically satisfy the curl constraints, is also presented. It shows the tremendous value of higher order WENO-like schemes in minimizing dissipation and dispersion for this class of problems. Numerical results are also presented to show that the edge-centered curl-preserving (ECCP) schemes meet their design accuracy. This paper is the first paper that invents non-linearly hybridized curl-preserving reconstruction and integrates it with higher order Godunov philosophy. By its very design, this paper is, therefore, intended to be forward-looking and to set the stage for future work on curl involution-constrained PDEs.