
Non-Ocillatory Limited-Time Integration for Conservation Laws and
Convection-Diffusion Equations
Jingcheng Lu and James D.Baeder
Abstract
In this study we consider unconditionally non-oscillatory, high order implicit time marching based on time-
limiters. The first aspect of our work is to propose the high resolution Limited-DIRK3 (L-DIRK3) scheme for
conservation laws and convection-diffusion equations in the method-of-lines framework. The scheme can be used
in conjunction with an arbitrary high order spatial discretization scheme such as 5th order WENO scheme. It
can be shown that the strongly S-stable DIRK3 scheme is not SSP and may introduce strong oscillations under
large time step. To overcome the oscillatory nature of DIRK3, the key idea of L-DIRK3 scheme is to apply local
time-limiters (K.Duraisamy, J.D.Baeder, J-G Liu), with which the order of accuracy in time is locally dropped to
first order in the regions where the evolution of solution is not smooth. In this way, the monotonicity condition
is locally satisfied, while a high order of accuracy is still maintained in most of the solution domain. For
convenience of applications to systems of equations, we propose a new and simple construction of time-limiters
which allows flexible choice of reference quantity with minimal computation cost. Another key aspect of our
work is to extend the application of time-limiter schemes to multidimensional problems and convection-diffusion
equations. Numerical experiments for scalar/systems of equations in one- and two-dimensions confirm the high
resolution and the improved stability of L-DIRK3 under large time steps. Moreover, the results indicate the
potential of time-limiter schemes to serve as a generic and convenient methodology to improve the stability of
arbitrary DIRK methods.
1 Introduction
We consider high resolution, non-oscillatory implicit time integration schemes for hyperbolic conservation laws
and convection-diffusion problems. The most common approach of finding numerical solutions to time-dependent
partial differential equations is the method-of-lines. In this framework, we perform proper spatial discretization
over the suitable domain and then integrate the resulting system of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) using
standard time integration schemes. In many practical applications this may result in a stiff ODE system, implicit
time integration may be preferred in order to enlarge the allowable time step.
Most of the existing studies on non-oscillatory numerical schemes focus on spatial discretizations. The early
stage framework was the class of monotone schemes, which, however, are only first order accurate [8]. Based
on less restrictive stability conditions, such as Total Variation Diminishing (TVD) and essentially non-oscillatory,
many high order non-oscillatory spatial reconstructions have been proposed, such as the TVD schemes [6] and the
ENO/WENO schemes [16]. However, ensuring non-oscillatory solutions of these high order schemes may require a
severe restriction on the time step. Particularly, for high order implicit schemes this restriction can be much more
restrictive than their linear stability limits.
To enable the use of larger time step for high order implicit time marching, K.Duraisamy, J.D.Baeder and
J-G.Liu [4] proposed the use of time-limiters, with which the strong oscillations of trapezoidal scheme and DIRK2
scheme were effectively reduced under large time steps. To better preserve the high resolution of high order spatial
reconstructions, in the present work we will extend the idea of limited-time integration to construct the new
Limited-DIRK3 (L-DIRK3). The key ingredient is to locally employ implicit Euler near discontinuities. A series
of numerical examples are presented to verify the improved stability and the high resolution of L-DIRK3.
2 Motivation of Time-Limiter Schemes
Consider initial value problem for conservation law
∂
∂t u(x, t) + ∂
∂x f(u(x, t)) = 0, u(x, 0) = u0(x), x ∈Ω, t ∈R+,(2.1)
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arXiv:2210.14075v1 [math.NA] 25 Oct 2022