The pressure-wired Stokes element: a mesh-robust version of the Scott-Vogelius element

Abstract

The Scott-Vogelius finite element pair for the numerical discretization of the stationary Stokes equation in 2D is a popular element which is based on a continuous velocity approximation of polynomial order $k$ and a discontinuous pressure approximation of order $k-1$. It employs a "singular distance" (measured by some geometric mesh quantity $\Theta \left(\mathbf{z}\right)\ge 0$ for triangle vertices $\mathbf{z}$) and imposes a local side condition on the pressure space associated to vertices $\mathbf{z}$ with $\Theta \left(\mathbf{z}\right)=0$. The method is inf-sup stable for any fixed regular triangulation and $k\ge 4$. However, the inf-sup constant deteriorates if the triangulation contains nearly singular vertices $0<\Theta \left(\mathbf{z}\right)\ll 1$. In this paper, we introduce a very simple parameter-dependent modification of the Scott-Vogelius element such that the inf-sup constant is independent of nearly-singular vertices. We will show by analysis and also by numerical experiments that the effect on the divergence-free condition for the discrete velocity is negligibly small.