We present an efficient method for the computation of homogenized coefficients of divergence-form operators with random coefficients. The approach is based on a multiscale representation of the homogenized coefficients. We then implement the method numerically using a finite-element method with hierarchical hybrid grids, which is a semi-implicit method allowing for significant gains in memory usage and execution time. Finally, we demonstrate the efficiency of our approach on two- and three-dimensional examples, for piecewise-constant coefficients with corner discontinuities. For moderate ellipticity contrast and for a precision of a few percentage points, our method allows to compute the homogenized coefficients on a laptop computer in a few seconds, in two dimensions, or in a few minutes, in three dimensions.
This contribution is the numerically oriented companion article of the work [E. Cances, V. Ehrlacher, F. Legoll, B. Stamm and S. Xiang, arxiv preprint 1807.05131]. We focus here on the numerical resolution of the embedded corrector problem introduced in [E. Cances, V. Ehrlacher, F. Legoll and B. Stamm, CRAS 2015; E. Cances, V. Ehrlacher, F. Legoll, B. Stamm and S. Xiang, arxiv preprint 1807.05131] in the context of homogenization of diffusion equations. Our approach consists in considering a corrector-type problem, posed on the whole space, but with a diffusion matrix which is constant outside some bounded domain. In [E. Cances, V. Ehrlacher, F. Legoll, B. Stamm and S. Xiang, arxiv preprint 1807.05131], we have shown how to define three approximate homogenized diffusion coefficients on the basis of the embedded corrector problems. We have also proved that these approximations all converge to the exact homogenized coefficients when the size of the bounded domain increases. We show here that, under the assumption that the diffusion matrix is piecewise constant, the corrector problem to solve can be recast as an integral equation. In case of spherical inclusions with isotropic materials, we explain how to efficiently discretize this integral equation using spherical harmonics, and how to use the fast multipole method (FMM) to compute the resulting matrix-vector products at a cost which scales only linearly with respect to the number of inclusions. Numerical tests illustrate the performance of our approach in various settings. This article is the first part of a two-fold study, the objective of which is the theoretical analysis and numerical investigation of new approximate corrector problems in the context of stochastic homogenization. We present here three new alternatives for the approximation of the homogenized matrix for diffusion problems with highly-oscillatory coefficients. These different approximations all rely on the use of an embedded corrector problem (that we previously introduced in [Cances, Ehrlacher, Legoll and Stamm, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, 2015]), where a finite-size domain made of the highly oscillatory material is embedded in a homogeneous infinite medium whose diffusion coefficients have to be appropriately determined. The motivation for considering such embedded corrector problems is made clear in the companion article [Cances, Ehrlacher, Legoll, Stamm and Xiang, in preparation], where a very efficient algorithm is presented for the resolution of such problems for particular heterogeneous materials. In the present article, we prove that the three different approximations we introduce converge to the homogenized matrix of the medium when the size of the embedded domain goes to infinity.