An efficient class of WENO schemes with adaptive order

Finite difference WENO schemes have established themselves as very worthy performers for entire classes of applications that involve hyperbolic conservation laws. In this paper we report on two major advances that make finite difference WENO schemes more efficient. The first advance consists of realizing that WENO schemes require us to carry out stencil operations very efficiently. In this paper we show that the reconstructed polynomials for any one-dimensional stencil can be expressed most efficiently and economically in Legendre polynomials. By using Legendre basis, we show that the reconstruction polynomials and their corresponding smoothness indicators can be written very compactly. The smoothness indicators are written as a sum of perfect squares. Since this is a computationally expensive step, the efficiency of finite difference WENO schemes is enhanced by the innovation which is reported here. The second advance consists of realizing that one can make a non-linear hybridization between a large, centered, very high accuracy stencil and a lower order WENO scheme that is nevertheless very stable and capable of capturing physically meaningful extrema. This yields a class of adaptive order WENO schemes, which we call WENO-AO (for adaptive order). Thus we arrive at a WENO-AO(5,3) scheme that is at best fifth order accurate by virtue of its centered stencil with five zones and at worst third order accurate by virtue of being non-linearly hybridized with an r=3 CWENO scheme. The process can be extended to arrive at a WENO-AO(7,3) scheme that is at best seventh order accurate by virtue of its centered stencil with seven zones and at worst third order