A finite element method for a three-field formulation of linear elasticity based on biorthogonal systems

Abstract

We consider a mixed finite element method based on simplicial triangulations for a three-field formulation of linear elasticity. The three-field formulation is based on three unknowns: displacement, stress and strain. In order to obtain an efficient discretization scheme, we use a pair of finite element bases forming a biorthogonal system for the strain and stress. The biorthogonality relation allows us to statically condense out the strain and stress from the saddle-point system leading to a symmetric and positive-definite system. The strain and stress can be recovered in a post-processing step simply by inverting a diagonal matrix. Moreover, we show a uniform convergence of the finite element approximation in the incompressible limit. Numerical experiments are presented to support the theoretical results.