An octahedral \(C^{2}\) macro-element (Q2432793)

In the paper, a macro-element of smoothness \( C^2 \) is constructed on the split of an octahedron into eight tetrahedra. The octahedral macro-element uses polynomial splines of degree thirteen, the same degree as the Clough-Tocher macro-element introduced by \textit{P. Alfeld} and \textit{L. L. Schumacher} [Comput. Aided Geom. Des. 22, 710--721 (2005; Zbl 1084.65016)]. The new element does not require the splitting of each tetrahedron into subtetrahedra. Further, error bounds for Hermite interpolation using the octahedral macro-element are obtained. It provides optimal order of approximation of smooth functions.