Numerical analysis of a method for high Peclet number transport in porous media

A variationally consistent eddy viscosity discretization is presented in [W.J. Layton, A connection between subgrid scale eddy viscosity and mixed methods, Appl. Math. Comput. 133 (2002) 147–157] for the stationary convection diffusion problem. This discretization is extended to the evolutionary problem in [N. Heitmann, Subgridscale stabilization of time-dependent convection dominated diffusive transport, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 331 (2007) 38–50] with a near optimal error bound. In the following, we couple this discretization with the porous media problem. We present a comprehensive analysis of stability and error for the velocity field derived from the porous media problem. Next, using a backward Euler approximation for the time derivative we follow the inherited error in velocity through the coupling with the convection diffusion problem. The method is shown to be stable and the error near optimal and independent of the diffusion coefficient, ϵ.