Spectral methods on triangles and other domains

Abstract

This article shows how to obtain multidimensional spectral methods as a warped product of one-dimensional spectral methods, thus generalizing direct (tensor) products. This generalization includes the fast Fourier transform. Applications are given for spectral approximation on a disk and on a triangle. The use of the disk spectral method for simulating the Navier-Stokes equations in a periodic pipe is detailed. The use of the triangle method in a spectral element scheme is discussed. The degree of approximation of the triangle method is computed in a new way, which favorably compares with the classical approximation estimates.