A multiscale/stabilized finite element method for the advection–diffusion equation Original Research Article

This paper presents a multiscale method that yields a stabilized finite element formulation for the advection–diffusion equation. The multiscale method arises from a decomposition of the scalar field into coarse (resolved) scale and fine (unresolved) scale. The resulting stabilized formulation possesses superior properties like that of the SUPG and the GLS methods. A significant feature of the present method is that the definition of the stabilization term appears naturally, and therefore the formulation is free of any user-designed or user-defined parameters. Another important ingredient is that since the method is residual based, it satisfies consistency ab initio. Based on the proposed formulation, a family of 2-D elements comprising 3 and 6 node triangles and 4 and 9 node quadrilaterals has been developed. Numerical results show the good performance of the method on uniform, skewed as well as composite meshes and confirm convergence at optimal rates.