In this paper we mathematically analyse an evolution variational inequality which formulates the double critical-state model for type-II superconductivity in 3D space and propose a finite element method to discretize the formulation. The double critical-state model originally proposed by Clem and Perez-Gonzalez is formulated as a model in 3D space which characterizes the nonlinear relation between the electric field, the electric current, the perpendicular component of the electric current to the magnetic flux, and the parallel component of the current to the magnetic flux in bulk type-II superconductor. The existence of a solution to the variational inequality formulation is proved and the representation theorem of subdifferential for a class of energy functionals including our energy is established. The variational inequality formulation is discretized in time by a semi-implicit scheme and in space by the edge finite element of lowest order on a tetrahedral mesh.The fully discrete formulation is an unconstrained optimisation problem.The subsequence convergence property of the fully discrete solution is proved. Some numerical results computed under a rotating applied magnetic field are presented.

As a first draft of a model for a river flowing on a homogeneous porous ground, we consider a system where the Darcy and Stokes equations are coupled via appropriate matching conditions on the interface. We propose a discretization of this problem which combines the mortar method with standard finite elements, in order to handle separately the flow inside and outside the porous medium. We prove a priori and a posteriori error estimates for the resulting discrete problem. Some numerical experiments confirm the interest of the discretization.

A standard method for proving the inf-sup condition implying stability of finite element approximations for the stationary Stokes equations is to construct a Fortin operator. In this paper, we show how this can be done for two-dimensional triangular and rectangular Taylor-Hood methods, which use continuous piecewise polynomial approximations for both velocity and pressure.

We consider the Euler equations for compressible fluidsin a nozzle whose cross-section is variable and may contain discontinuities.We view these equations as a hyperbolic system in nonconservative formand investigate weak solutions in the sense of Dal Maso, LeFloch and Murat [J. Math. Pures Appl.74 (1995) 483–548].Observing that the entropy equality has a fully conservative form,we derive a minimum entropy principle satisfied by entropy solutions.We then establish the stability of a class of numerical approximations for this system.

In this paper we introduce and analyze some non-overlapping multiplicative Schwarz methods for discontinuous Galerkin (DG) approximations of elliptic problems. The construction of the Schwarz preconditioners is presented in a unified framework for a wide class of DG methods.For symmetric DG approximations we provide optimal convergence bounds for the corresponding error propagation operator, and we show that the resulting methods can be accelerated by using suitable Krylov space solvers. A discussion on the issue of preconditioning non-symmetric DG approximations of elliptic problems is also included. Extensive numerical experiments to confirm the theoretical results and to assess the robustness and the efficiency of the proposed preconditioners are provided.

This paper is devoted to Eulerian models for incompressible fluid-structure systems. These models are primarily derived for computational purposes as they allow to simulate in a rather straightforward way complex 3D systems. We first analyze the level set model of immersed membranes proposed in [Cottet and Maitre, Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci.16 (2006) 415–438]. We in particular show that this model can be interpreted as a generalization of so-called Korteweg fluids. We then extend this model to more generic fluid-structure systems. In this framework, assuming anisotropy, the membrane model appears as a formal limit system when the elastic body width vanishes. We finally provide some numerical experiments which illustrate this claim.

We consider a family of quadrilateral or hexahedral mixed hp-finite elements for an incompressible flow problem with Q r -elements for the velocity anddiscontinuous $P_{r-1}$ -elements for the pressure where the orderr can vary from element to elementbetween 2 and an arbitrary bound.For multilevel adaptive grids with hanging nodes and a sufficiently small mesh size,we prove the inf-sup condition uniformly with respect to the meshsize and the polynomial degree.