Error estimates for finite-element Navier-Stokes solvers without standard Inf-Sup conditions

Abstract

The authors establish error estimates for recently developed finite-element methods for incompressible viscous flow in domains with no-slip boundary conditions. The methods arise by discretization of a well-posed extended Navier-Stokes dynamics for which pressure is determined from current velocity and force fields. The methods use C1 elements for velocity and C0 elements for pressure. A stability estimate is proved for a related finite-element projection method close to classical time-splitting methods of Orszag, Israeli, DeVille and Karniadakis.