Goal-Oriented Error Estimation and Mesh Adaptation for Shallow Water Modelling

Joseph Gregory Wallwork , Nicolas Barral , Stephan C Kramer, David A Ham , Matthew Piggott

Numerical modelling frequently involves a diagnostic quantity of interest (QoI) - often of greater importance than the PDE solution - which we seek to accurately approximate. In the case of coastal ocean modelling the power output of a tidal turbine farm is one such example. Goal-oriented error estimation and mesh adaptation can be used to provide meshes which are well-suited to achieving this goal, using fewer computational resources than required by other methods, such as uniform refinement.

A mixed discontinuous/continuous Galerkin approach is applied to solve the nonlinear shallow water equations within the Thetis coastal ocean finite element model. An implementation of goal-oriented mesh adaptation is outlined, including an error estimate which takes account of the discontinuities in the discrete solution and a method for approximating the adjoint error. Results are presented for simulations of two model tidal farm configurations. Convergence analysis indicates that the anisotropic goal-oriented adaptation strategy yields meshes which permit accurate QoI estimation using fewer computational resources than uniform refinement.