A Stable Mixed Element Method for the Biharmonic Equation with First-Order Function Spaces

Abstract

AbstractThis paper studies the mixed element method for the boundary value problem of the biharmonic equation {\Delta^{2}u=f} in two dimensions. We start from a {u\sim\nabla u\sim\nabla^{2}u\sim\operatorname{div}\nabla^{2}u} formulation that is discussed in [4] and construct its stability on {H^{1}_{0}(\Omega)\times\tilde{H}^{1}_{0}(\Omega)\times\bar{L}_{\mathrm{sym}}^% {2}(\Omega)\times H^{-1}(\operatorname{div},\Omega)}. Then we utilise the Helmholtz decomposition of {H^{-1}(\operatorname{div},\Omega)} and construct a new formulation stable on first-order and zero-order Sobolev spaces. Finite element discretisations are then given with respect to the new formulation, and both theoretical analysis and numerical verification are given.