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Abstract

We introduce a nodally bound-preserving Galerkin method for second-order elliptic problems on general polygonal/polyhedral, henceforth collectively termed as \emph{polytopic}, meshes. Starting from an interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin (DG) formulation posed on a polytopic mesh, the method enforces preservation of \emph{a priori} prescribed upper and lower bounds for the numerical solution at an arbitrary number of user-defined points \emph{within} each polytopic element. This is achieved by employing a simplicial submesh and enforcing bound preservation at the submesh nodes via a nonlinear iteration. By construction, the submeshing procedure preserves the order of accuracy of the DG method, \emph{without} introducing any additional global numerical degrees of freedom compared to the baseline DG method, thereby, falling into the category of composite finite element approaches. A salient feature of the proposed method is that it automatically reverts to the standard DG method on polytopic meshes when no prescribed bound violation occurs. In particular, the choice of the discontinuity-penalisation parameter is independent of the submesh granularity. The resulting composite method combines the geometric flexibility of polytopic meshes with the accuracy and stability of discontinuous Galerkin discretisations, while rigorously guaranteeing bound preservation. The existence and uniqueness of the numerical solution is proven. A priori error bounds, assuming sufficient regularity of the exact solution are shown, employing a non-standard construction of discrete nodally bound-preserving interpolant. Numerical experiments confirm optimal convergence for smooth problems and demonstrate robustness in the presence of sharp gradients, such as boundary and interior layers.