Three families of grad div-conforming finite elements

Abstract

Several smooth finite element de Rham complexes are constructed in three-dimensional space, which yield three families of grad-div conforming finite elements. The simplest element has only 8 degrees of freedom (DOFs) for a tetrahedron and 14 DOFs for a cuboid. These elements naturally lead to conforming approximations to quad-div problems. Numerical experiments for each family validate the correctness and efficiency of the elements for solving the quad-div problem.