English

Explicit Planar Finite Element Elasticity Complexes and $C^1$ Elements on Barycentric Refinements

Numerical Analysis 2026-04-30 v1 Numerical Analysis

Abstract

The exact-sequence structure behind the Arnold--Douglas--Gupta family of higher-order mixed finite elements for plane elasticity on barycentric refinements is made explicit. On each macro triangle, the symmetric stress space is obtained by enriching polynomial stresses with three locally supported functions. We derive closed-form formulas for these enrichments and identify explicit Airy potentials that generate them. This leads to a concrete Hsieh--Clough--Tocher type C1C^1 potential space whose Airy image is exactly the Arnold--Douglas--Gupta stress space. By enforcing single-valued degrees of freedom, we obtain global spaces and a fully explicit finite element elasticity complex on simply connected domains. As a consequence, we construct a new family of C1C^1 finite elements on barycentric refinements, including quadratic, cubic, quartic, and higher-order elements.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.26701,
  title  = {Explicit Planar Finite Element Elasticity Complexes and $C^1$ Elements on Barycentric Refinements},
  author = {Chunyu Chen and Long Chen and Xuehai Huang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.26701},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

17 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:41:25.922Z