Entropy stabilization and property-preserving limiters for discontinuous Galerkin discretizations of nonlinear hyperbolic equations

The methodology proposed in this paper bridges the gap between entropy stable and positivity-preserving discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods for nonlinear hyperbolic problems. The entropy stability property and, optionally, preservation of local bounds for the cell averages are enforced using flux limiters based on entropy conditions and discrete maximum principles, respectively. Entropy production by the (limited) gradients of the piecewise-linear DG approximation is constrained using Rusanov-type entropy viscosity, as proposed by Abgrall in the context of nodal finite element approximations. We cast his algebraic entropy fix into a form suitable for arbitrary polynomial bases and, in particular, for modal DG approaches. The Taylor basis representation of the entropy stabilization term reveals that it penalizes the solution gradients in a manner similar to slope limiting and requires semi-implicit treatment to achieve the desired effect. The implicit Taylor basis version of the Rusanov entropy fix preserves the sparsity pattern of the element mass matrix. Hence, no linear systems need to be solved if the Taylor basis is orthogonal and an explicit treatment of the remaining terms is adopted. The optional application of a vertex-based slope limiter constrains the piecewise-linear DG solution to be bounded by local maxima and minima of the cell averages. The combination of entropy stabilization with flux and slope limiting leads to constrained approximations that possess all desired properties. Numerical studies of the new limiting techniques and entropy correction procedures are performed for two scalar two-dimensional test problems with nonlinear and nonconvex flux functions.