Analysis of a linearized poromechanics model for incompressible and nearly incompressible materials

Abstract

In this work, we thoroughly analyze the linearized version of a poromechanics model developed to simulate soft tissues perfusion. This is a fully unsteady model in which the fluid and solid equations are strongly coupled through the interstitial pressure. As such, it generalizes Darcy, Brinkman and Biot equations of poroelasticity. The mathematical and numerical analysis of this model was initially performed for a compressible porous material. Here, we focus on the nearly incompressible case with a semigroup approach, which also allows us to prove the existence of weak solutions. We show the existence and uniqueness of strong and weak solutions in the incompressible limit case, for which a divergence constraint on the mixture velocity appears. Due to the special form of the coupling, the underlying problem is not coercive. Nevertheless, by using the notion of $ T $-coercivity, we obtain stability estimates and well-posedness results. Our study also provides guidelines to propose stable and robust approximations of the problem with mixed finite elements. In particular, we recover an inf-sup condition that is independent of the porosity. Finally, we numerically investigate the elliptic regularity of the associated steady-state problem and illustrate the sensitivity of the solution with respect to the different model parameters.