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We develop a multipoint stress mixed finite element method for linear elasticity with weak stress symmetry on quadrilateral grids, which can be reduced to a symmetric and positive definite cell centered system. The method utilizes the lowest order Brezzi–Douglas–Marini finite element spaces for the stress and the trapezoidal quadrature rule in order to localize the interaction of degrees of freedom, which allows for local stress elimination around each vertex. We develop two variants of the method. The first uses a piecewise constant rotation and results in a cell‐centered system for displacement and rotation. The second uses a continuous piecewise bilinear rotation and trapezoidal quadrature rule for the asymmetry bilinear form. This allows for further elimination of the rotation, resulting in a cell‐centered system for the displacement only. Stability and error analysis is performed for both methods. First‐order convergence is established for all variables in their natural norms. A duality argument is employed to prove second order superconvergence of the displacement at the cell centers. Numerical results are presented in confirmation of the theory.

 

We develop a mixed finite element method for the coupled problem arising in the interaction between a free fluid governed by the Stokes equations and flow in deformable porous medium modeled by the Biot system of poroelasticity. Mass conservation, balance of stress, and the Beavers–Joseph–Saffman condition are imposed on the interface. We consider a fully mixed Biot formulation based on a weakly symmetric stress-displacement-rotation elasticity system and Darcy velocity-pressure flow formulation. A velocity-pressure formulation is used for the Stokes equations. The interface conditions are incorporated through the introduction of the traces of the structure velocity and the Darcy pressure as Lagrange multipliers. Existence and uniqueness of a solution are established for the continuous weak formulation. Stability and error estimates are derived for the semi-discrete continuous-in-time mixed finite element approximation. Numerical experiments are presented to verify the theoretical results and illustrate the robustness of the method with respect to the physical parameters. 

We study unsaturated poroelasticity, i.e. , coupled hydro-mechanical processes in variably saturated porous media, here modeled by a non-linear extension of Biot’s well-known quasi-static consolidation model. The coupled elliptic-parabolic system of partial differential equations is a simplified version of the general model for multi-phase flow in deformable porous media, obtained under similar assumptions as usually considered for Richards’ equation. In this work, existence of weak solutions is established in several steps involving a numerical approximation of the problem using a physically-motivated regularization and a finite element/finite volume discretization. Eventually, solvability of the original problem is proved by a combination of the Rothe and Galerkin methods, and further compactness arguments. This approach in particular provides the convergence of the numerical discretization to a regularized model for unsaturated poroelasticity. The final existence result holds under non-degeneracy conditions and natural continuity properties for the constitutive relations. The assumptions are demonstrated to be reasonable in view of geotechnical applications. 

Abstract We propose and analyse a mixed formulation for the Brinkman–Forchheimer equations for unsteady flows. Our approach is based on the introduction of a pseudostress tensor related to the velocity gradient and pressure, leading to a mixed formulation where the pseudostress tensor and the velocity are the main unknowns of the system. We establish existence and uniqueness of a solution to the weak formulation in a Banach space setting, employing classical results on nonlinear monotone operators and a regularization technique. We then present well posedness and error analysis for semidiscrete continuous-in-time and fully discrete finite element approximations on simplicial grids with spatial discretization based on the Raviart–Thomas spaces of degree $k$ for the pseudostress tensor and discontinuous piecewise polynomial elements of degree $k$ for the velocity and backward Euler time discretization. We provide several numerical results to confirm the theoretical rates of convergence and illustrate the performance and flexibility of the method for a range of model parameters.