Error analysis for local discontinuous Galerkin semidiscretization of Richards’ equation

Abstract This paper concerns an error analysis of the space semidiscrete scheme for the Richards’ equation modeling flows in variably saturated porous media. This nonlinear parabolic partial differential equation can degenerate; namely, we consider the case where the time derivative term can vanish, i.e., the fast-diffusion type of degeneracy. We discretize the Richards’ equation by the local discontinuous Galerkin method, which provides high order accuracy and preserves stability. Due to the nonlinearity of the problem, special techniques for numerical analysis of the scheme are required. In particular, we combine two partial error bounds using continuous mathematical induction and derive a priori error estimates with respect to the spatial discretization parameter and the Hölder coefficient of the nonlinear temporal derivative. Finally, the theoretical results are supported by numerical experiments, including cases beyond the assumptions of the theoretical results.