A discontinuous Galerkin method for a coupled Stokes–Biot problem

The interaction between fluid and poroelastic structure is a complex problem that couples the Stokes equations with the Biot system. In this work, we rewrite the poroelastic equations using three fields (displacement, fluid pressure, and total pressure) to account for locking phenomenon in fluid–structure interaction and the oscillation of numerical solutions. Then, in order to solve the coupled system, we use the weighted discontinuous Galerkin finite element method for spatial discretization and propose a semi-discrete scheme. In addition, we propose a fully discrete scheme using the backward Euler’s method for temporal discretization. In the framework of the Galerkin approximation, the stability and errors of semi- and fully discrete schemes are analyzed using the theory of differential algebraic equations and weak compactness arguments. Through numerical experiments, we validate the theoretical rate of convergence, explain the behavior of the method in modeling the interaction between surface and groundwater hydrological systems, investigate the robustness of the method with respect to physical parameters, and simulate channel filtering. In particular, the numerical results are free of locking features, reducing non-physical numerical oscillations.