Nonlinear Model Reduction Based On The Finite Element Method With Interpolated Coefficients: Semilinear Parabolic Equations

Abstract: For nonlinear reduced-order models, especially for those with non-polynomial nonlinearities, the computational complexity still depends on the dimension of the original dynamical system. As a result, the reduced-order model loses its computational efficiency, which, however, is its the most significant advantage. Nonlinear dimensional reduction methods, such as the discrete empirical interpolation method, have been widely used to evaluate the nonlinear terms at a low cost. But when the finite element method is utilized for the spatial discretization, nonlinear snapshot generation requires inner products to be fulfilled, which costs lots of off-line time. Numerical integrations are also needed over elements sharing the selected interpolation points during the simulation, which keeps on-line time high. In this paper, we extend the finite element method with interpolated coefficients to nonlinear reduced-order models. It approximates the nonlinear function in the reduced-order model by its finite element interpolation, which makes coefficient matrices of the nonlinear terms pre-computable and, thus, leads to great savings in the computational efforts. Due to the separation of spatial and temporal variables in the finite element interpolation, the discrete empirical interpolation method can be directly applied on the nonlinear functions. Therefore, the main computational hurdles when applying the discrete empirical interpolation method in the finite element context are conquered. We also establish a rigorous asymptotic error estimation, which shows that the proposed approach achieves the same accuracy as that of the standard finite element method under certain smoothness assumptions of the nonlinear functions. Several numerical tests are presented to validate the proposed method and verify the theoretical results.