Locking effects in the finite element approximation of elasticity problems (Q1203418)

The elasticity problem for a polygonal domain, governed by the Lamé- Navier equation is considered when the Poisson ratio \(\nu\) is close to 0.5, i.e. when the material is nearly incompressible and hence locking effects occur. The robustness of finite element approximations using the standard displacement formulation is investigated concerning the error in the displacements and the energy norm with respect to a practical range of discretization. A general mathematical theory, developed in another paper by the authors, is specialized to analyze Poisson locking. Some necessary regularity results, adaptations of definitions concerning extension procedures and the notion of uniform and quasiuniform meshes are first presented. Finally, various locking and robustness results for the \(h\)-version as well as for the \(p\) and \(h-p\) versions of the finite element method are shown. Optimal rates of convergence are obtained that are uniform in \(\nu\).