A non-uniform basis order for the discontinuous Galerkin method of the acoustic and elastic wave equations

Here, we solve the time-dependent acoustic and elastic wave equations using the discontinuous Galerkin method for spatial discretization and the low-storage Runge–Kutta and Crank–Nicolson methods for time integration. The aim of the present paper is to study how to choose the order of polynomial basis functions for each element in the computational mesh to obtain a predetermined relative error. In this work, the formula 2 p + 1 ≈ κ h k , which connects the polynomial basis order p, mesh parameter h, wave number k, and free parameter κ, is studied. The aim is to obtain a simple selection method for the order of the basis functions so that a relatively constant error level of the solution can be achieved. The method is examined using numerical experiments. The results of the experiments indicate that this method is a promising approach for approximating the degree of the basis functions for an arbitrarily sized element. However, in certain model problems we show the failure of the proposed selection scheme. In such a case, the method provides an initial basis for a more general p-adaptive discontinuous Galerkin method.