English

A simple finite element method for the Stokes equations

Numerical Analysis 2016-10-19 v1

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to introduce a simple finite element method to solve the Stokes and the Navier-Stokes equations. This method is in primal velocity-pressure formulation and is so simple such that both velocity and pressure are approximated by piecewise constant functions. Implementation issues as well as error analysis are investigated. A basis for a divergence free subspace of the velocity field is constructed so that the original saddle point problem can be reduced to a symmetric and positive definite system with much fewer unknowns. The numerical experiments indicate that the method is accurate and robust.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1610.05355,
  title  = {A simple finite element method for the Stokes equations},
  author = {Lin Mu and Xiu Ye},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.05355},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T16:23:31.381Z