LBB stability of a mixed Galerkin finite element pair for fluid flow simulations

We introduce a new mixed finite element for solving the 2- and 3-dimensional wave equations and equations of incompressible flow. The element, which we refer to as P1(D)-P2, uses discontinuous piecewise linear functions for velocity and continuous piecewise quadratic functions for pressure. The aim of introducing the mixed formulation is to produce a new flexible element choice for triangular and tetrahedral meshes which satisfies the LBB stability condition and hence has no spurious zero-energy modes. The advantage of this particular element choice is that the mass matrix for velocity is block diagonal so it can be trivially inverted; it also allows the order of the pressure to be increased to quadratic whilst maintaining LBB stability which has benefits in geophysical applications with Coriolis forces. We give a normal mode analysis of the semi-discrete wave equation in one dimension which shows that the element pair is stable, and demonstrate that the element is stable with numerical integrations of the wave equation in two dimensions, an analysis of the resultant discrete Laplace operator in two and three dimensions on various meshes which shows that the element pair does not have any spurious modes. We provide convergence tests for the element pair which confirm that the element is stable since the convergence rate of the numerical solution is quadratic. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.