High order compact schemes for gradient approximation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose three gradient recovery schemes of higher order for the linear interpolation. The first one is a weighted averaging method based on the gradients of the linear interpolation on the uniform mesh, the second is a geometric averaging method constructed from the gradients of two cubic interpolation on macro element, and the last one is a local least square method on the nodal patch with cubic polynomials. We prove that these schemes can approximate the gradient of the exact solution on the symmetry points with fourth order. In particular, for the uniform mesh, we show that these three schemes are the same on the considered points. The last scheme is more robust in general meshes. Consequently, we obtain the superconvergence results of the recovered gradient by using the aforementioned results and the supercloseness between the finite element solution and the linear interpolation of the exact solution. Finally, we provide several numerical experiments to illustrate the theoretical results.