Unconditional convergence and optimal error estimates of a Galerkin-mixed FEM for incompressible miscible flow in porous media

In this paper, we study the unconditional convergence and error estimates of a Galerkin-mixed FEM with the linearized semi-implicit Euler scheme for the equations of incompressible miscible flow in porous media. We prove that the optimal L² error estimates hold without any time-step (convergence) conditions, while all previous works require certain time-step restrictions. Our theoretical results provide a new understanding on commonly used linearized schemes. The proof is based on a splitting of the error into two parts: the error from the time discretization of the PDEs and the error from the finite element discretization of corresponding time-discrete PDEs. The approach used in this paper can be applied to more general nonlinear parabolic systems and many other linearized (semi)-implicit time discretizations. © 2013 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.