Linear, decoupled and positivity-preserving staggered mesh schemes for general dissipative systems with arbitrary energy distributions

Abstract In this paper, we develop a novel staggered mesh (SM) approach for general nonlinear dissipative systems with arbitrary energy distributions (including cases with known or unknown energy lower bounds). Based on this framework, we propose several second-order semi-discrete schemes that maintain linearity, computational decoupling, and unconditional energy stability. Firstly, for dissipative systems with known energy lower bounds, we introduce a positive auxiliary variable V ( t ) to substitute the total energy functional, subsequently discretizing it on staggered temporal meshes to ensure that the energy remains non-increasing regardless of the size of time step. The newly developed schemes achieve full computational decoupling, maintaining essentially the same computational expense as conventional implicit–explicit methods while demonstrating significantly improved accuracy. Furthermore, we rigorously establish the positivity preservation of the discrete variable V n +1/2 , which is a crucial property ensuring numerical stability and accuracy. Theoretical analysis confirms second-order temporal convergence for the proposed SM scheme. Secondly, for dissipative systems lacking well-defined energy lower bounds, we devise an alternative auxiliary variable formulation and extend the SM framework to maintain unconditional energy stability while preserving numerical effectiveness and accuracy. Finally, comprehensive numerical experiments, including benchmark problem simulations, validate the proposed schemes’ efficacy and demonstrate their superior performance characteristics.