A new family of stable mixed finite elements for the 3D Stokes equations

Abstract

A natural mixed-element approach for the Stokes equations in the velocity-pressure formulation would approximate the velocity by continuous piecewise-polynomials and would approximate the pressure by discontinuous piecewise-polynomials of one degree lower. However, many such elements are unstable in 2D and 3D. This paper is devoted to proving that the mixed finite elements of this P k \mathbf {P}_k - P k − 1 P_{k-1} type when k ≥ 3 k \ge 3 satisfy the stability condition—the Babuška-Brezzi inequality on macro-tetrahedra meshes where each big tetrahedron is subdivided into four subtetrahedra. This type of mesh simplifies the implementation since it has no restrictions on the initial mesh. The new element also suits the multigrid method.