Stability, accuracy, and efficiency of some underintegrated methods in finite element computations (Q1067385)

Underintegration refers to the use of a numerical quadrature formula of one order lower than that required to integrate polynomial integrands exactly. The main drawback of this practice is that it produces numerical instabilities (spurious modes) when integrals defining stiffness matrices are evaluated using numerical quadrature rules in the implementation of most finite element methods. In order to overcome this difficulty an a- posteriori method for elimination of this spurious modes is exposed. The method is applied to the Laplace equation with Dirichlet or mixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary conditions using only one integration point per element.