Accuracy of WENO and Adaptive Order WENO Reconstructions for Solving Conservation Laws

In this paper, we analyze standard weighted essentially nonoscillatory (WENO) reconstructions and multilevel WENO reconstructions with adaptive order (WENO-AO) using both WENO-JS and WENO-Z weighting. We also present a new WENO-AO reconstruction. We give conditions under which the reconstructions achieve optimal order accuracy for both smooth solutions and solutions with discontinuities. The old WENO-AO reconstruction drops to a fixed, base level of approximation when there are discontinuities in the solution, but the new one maintains the accuracy of the largest stencil over which the solution is smooth. Our analysis in the discontinuous case requires that the smoothness indicators do not approach zero as the grid is refined. We provide a condition to ensure this result, but we also show an example where this can fail to occur. That is, we show that WENO reconstructions can fail to maintain the order of approximation of the smallest stencil over which the solution is smooth. We also present numerical results confirming the convergence theory of the old and new WENO-AO reconstructions and compare their performance in solving conservation laws.