The Stochastic Galerkin Method for Darcy flow problem with log-normal random field coefficients

Abstract

This article presents a study of the Stochastic Galerkin Method (SGM) applied to the Darcy flow problem with a log-normally distributed random material field given by a mean value and an autocovariance function. We divide the solution of the problem into two parts. The first one is the decomposition of a random field into a sum of products of a random vector and a function of spatial coordinates; this can be achieved using the Karhunen-Loeve expansion. The second part is the solution of the problem using SGM. SGM is a simple extension of the Galerkin method in which the random variables represent additional problem dimensions. For the discretization of the problem, we use a finite element basis for spatial variables and a polynomial chaos discretization for random variables. The results of SGM can be utilised for the analysis of the problem, such as the examination of the average flow, or as a tool for the Bayesian approach to inverse problems.