Quasi-nonlocal coupling of nonlocal diffusions

We developed a new self-adjoint, consistent, and stable coupling strategy for nonlocal diffusion models, inspired by the quasi-nonlocal atomistic-to-continuum method for crystalline solids. The proposed coupling model is coercive with respect to the energy norms induced by the nonlocal diffusion kernels as well as the L2 norm, and it satisfies the maximum principle. A finite difference approximation is used to discretize the coupled system, which inherits the property from the continuous formulation. Furthermore, we design a numerical example that shows the discrepancy between the fully nonlocal and fully local diffusions, whereas the result of the coupled diffusion agrees with that of the fully nonlocal diffusion.

Duke Scholars

Author Jianfeng Lu Mathematics