Jüngel, A. (2025, June 30). Finite-volume methods for cross-diffusion systems and discrete chain rules [Presentation]. Oberseminar Numerik, Mainz, Germany. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12708/217628
Many thermodynamic mixture and biological multicomponent models can be described
by cross-diffusion systems. Although the diffusion matrices are generally neither
symmetric and nor positive definite, the systems often possess an entropy (or free
energy) structure. We aim to "translate" this entropy structure to two-point approximation finite-volume discretizations. The main difficulty is to adapt the nonlinear chain rule to the discrete level.
In this talk, we present two strategies to define a discrete chain rule, assuming either
that the entropy is the sum of individual entropies or that the entropy describes volume-
filling models. Both strategies use suitable mean formulas, based on the mean-value
theorem and the convexity of the entropy functional. This leads to convergent and
structure-preserving finite-volume schemes. Examples include models for segregating
populations and Maxwell-Stefan systems for gas mixtures.