New hybridized mixed methods for linear elasticity and optimal multilevel solvers (Q1719568)

This paper is concerned with developing a family of new mixed finite element methods for solving the linear elasticity problem in a polygonal domain of \(\mathbb {R}^n\) (\(n=2,3\)). When \(k\geq n\), the authors prove that the mixed finite element spaces \({\mathcal P}_{k+1}-{\mathcal P}_{k}\) for approximating the stress and displacement satisfy the inf-sup condition and achieve the optimal error estimate. For the lower order case \(k\in [n-2,n)\), the stability and convergence can still hold on some special grids. To relax the inter-element continuity, the authors propose to solve the mixed method by the hybridization method, which results in a discontinous stress space and an extra Lagrange multiplier finite element space. Then they develop and analyze multilevel solvers for the two-dimensional hybridized system. Uniform convergence with respect to the grid size and Poisson's ratio is established for grids with no nearly singular vertex. Numerical results supporting the analysis are presented.