A Lagrange multiplier method for a Stokes-Biot fluid-poroelastic structure interaction model (Q1616016)

The authors study a finite element discretization of the coupled problem describing the interaction of a free incompressible Newtonian fluid with a fluid in a poroelastic medium. The effect of deformation of the medium is taken into account. The free fluid is modeled with the Stokes equations and the fluid in the poroelastic medium with the Biot system. For modeling the deformation of the porous material, Darcy's equation is used. The interface conditions come from mass conservation, balance of stresses and slip with friction. The mass conservation condition is imposed via a Lagrange multiplier. The resulting Lagrange multiplier variational (weak) formulation in the Stokes region is discretized using finite element spaces for the fluid velocity and the pressure, respectively, which are inf-sup stable. In the porous medium, inf-sup stable mixed finite elements are chosen, and a conforming Lagrangian finite element space is employed for approximating the structure deformation. The authors prove the existence and uniqueness of the Stokes-Biot system. A stability analysis of a semi-discrete approximation is presented in detail, followed by error estimates. Also, a fully discrete formulation obtained by time-discretization using the backward Euler method is studied. Six pages of the paper are devoted to report on numerical experiments, among them a fluid flow in an irregularly shaped fractured reservoir, to confirm the theoretical results and also to show the robustness of the method. The list of references comprises 53 items.