Strong and weak arbitrary discontinuities in spectral finite elements

Methods for constructing arbitrary discontinuities within spectral finite elements are described and studied. We use the concept of the eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM), which introduces the discontinuity through a local partition of unity, so there is no requirement for the mesh to be aligned with the discontinuities. A key aspect of the implementation of this method is the treatment of the blending elements adjacent to the local partition of unity. We found that a partition constructed from spectral functions one order lower than the continuous approximation is optimal and no special treatment is needed for higher order elements. For the quadrature of the Galerkin weak form, since the integrand is discontinuous, we use a strategy of subdividing the discontinuous elements into 6‐ and 10‐node triangles; the order of the element depends on the order of the spectral method for curved discontinuities. Several numerical examples are solved to examine the accuracy of the methods. For straight discontinuities, we achieved the optimal convergence rate of the spectral element. For the curved discontinuity, the convergence rate in the energy norm error is suboptimal. We attribute the suboptimality to the approximations in the quadrature scheme. We also found that modification of the adjacent elements is only needed for lower order spectral elements. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.