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Quadratic finite elements and incompressible viscous flows

Gartling, David K.; Dohrmann, Clark R.

Pressure stabilization methods are applied to higher-order velocity finite elements for application to viscous incompressible flows. Both a standard pressure stabilizing Petrov-Galerkin (PSPG) method and a new polynomial pressure projection stabilization (PPPS) method have been implemented and tested for various quadratic elements in two dimensions. A preconditioner based on relaxing the incompressibility constraint is also tested for the iterative solution of saddle point problems arising from mixed Galerkin finite element approximations to the Navier-Stokes equations. The preconditioner is demonstrated for BB stable elements with discontinuous pressure approximations in two and three dimensions.