Abstract

The simplest pair of spaces P{double-struck}1/P{double-struck}0 is made inf-sup stable for the mixed form of the Darcy equation. The key ingredient is to enhance the finite element spaces inside a Petrov-Galerkin framework with functions satisfying element-wise local Darcy problems with right hand sides depending on the residuals over elements and edges. The enriched method is symmetric, locally mass conservative and keeps the degrees of freedom of the original interpolation spaces. First, we assume local enrichments exactly computed and we prove uniqueness and optimal error estimates in natural norms. Then, a low cost two-level finite element method is proposed to effectively obtain enhancing basis functions. The approach lays on a two-scale numerical analysis and shows that well-posedness and optimality is kept, despite the second level numerical approximation. Several numerical experiments validate the theoretical results and compares (favourably in some cases) our results with the classical Raviart-Thomas element. © 2010 American Mathematical Society.