Multiscale analysis for convection dominated transport equations
Thomas Y. Hou, Dong Liang · Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems · 2008
In this paper, we perform a systematic multiscale analysis forconvection dominated transport equations with a weak diffusion and ahighly oscillatory velocity field. The paper primarily focuses onupscaling linear transport equations. But we also discuss brieflyhow to upscale two-phase miscible flows, in which casethe concentration equation is coupled to the pressure equationin a nonlinear fashion. For the problem we consider here,the local Peclet number is of order $O(\epsilon^{-m+1})$ with $m \in[2,\infty]$ being any integer, where $\epsilon$ characterizes thesmall scale in the heterogeneous media. Due to the presence of thenonlocal memory effect, upscaling a convection dominated transportequation is known to be very difficult. One of the key ideas inderiving a well-posed homogenized equation for the convectiondominated transport equation is to introduce a projection operatorwhich projects the fluctuation onto a suitable subspace. Thisprojection operator corresponds to averaging along the streamlinesof the flow. In the case of linear convection dominated transportequations, we prove the well-posedness of the homogenized equationsand establish rigorous error estimates for our multiscale expansion.