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Section: Scientific Foundations

Stabilized and discontinuous finite element methods

The discontinuous Galerkin method  [69] , [66] , [37] , [36] has gained enormous success in CFD due to its flexibility, links with finite volume methods, and its local conservation properties. In particular, it seems to be the most widely used finite element method for the Euler equations [39] . On the other hand, the main drawback of this approach is the large number of unknowns as compared to standard finite element methods. The situation is even worse if one counts the population of the resulting system matrices. In order to find a more efficient approach, it seems therefore important to study the connections with other finite element methods.

In view of the ubiquous problem of large Péclet numbers, stabilization techniques have been introduced since a long time. They are either based on upwinding or additional terms in the discrete variational formulation. The drawback of the first technique is a loss in consistency which generally leads to large numerical diffusion. The grand-father of the second technique is the SUPG/GLS method  [54] , [67] . Recently, new approaches have been developed, which try do avoid coupling of the different equations due to the residuals. In this context we cite LPS (local projection stabilization) [61] , [52] , [43] [1] and CIP (continuous interior penalty) [55] , [56] .