Smoothed projections in finite element exterior calculus

Abstract

The development of smoothed projections, constructed by combining the canonical interpolation operators defined from the degrees of freedom with a smoothing operator, has proved to be an effective tool in finite element exterior calculus. The advantage of these operators is that they are $L^2$ bounded projections, and still they commute with the exterior derivative. In the present paper we generalize the construction of these smoothed projections, such that also non-quasi-uniform meshes and essential boundary conditions are covered. The new tool introduced here is a space-dependent smoothing operator that commutes with the exterior derivative.