Dr. Gatica-Simpertigue, Luis

The numerical approximation of hyperelasticity must address nonlinear constitutive laws, geometric nonlinearities associated with large strains and deformations, the imposition of the incompressibility of the solid, and the solution of large linear systems arising from the discretisation of 3D problems in complex geometries. We adapt the three-field formulation for nearly incompressible hyperelasticity introduced in Chavan et al. (2007) to the fully incompressible case. The mixed formulation is of Hu–Washizu type and it differs from other approaches in that we use the Kirchhoff stress, displacement, and pressure as principal unknowns. We also discuss the solvability of the linearised problem restricted to neo-Hookean materials, illustrating the interplay between the coupling blocks. We construct a family of mixed finite element schemes (with different polynomial degrees) for simplicial meshes and verify its error decay through computational tests. We also propose a new augmented Lagrangian preconditioner that improves convergence properties of iterative solvers. The numerical performance of the family of mixed methods is assessed with benchmark solutions, and the applicability of the formulation is further tested in a model of cardiac biomechanics using orthotropic strain energy densities. The proposed methods are advantageous in terms of physical fidelity (as the Kirchhoff stress can be approximated with arbitrary accuracy and no locking is observed) and convergence (the discretisation and the preconditioners are robust and computationally efficient, and they compare favourably at least with respect to classical displacement–pressure schemes).

We introduce and analyze an augmented mixed finite element method for the Navier–Stokes–Brinkman problem with nonsolenoidal velocity. We employ a technique previously applied to the stationary Navier–Stokes equation, which consists of the introduction of a modified pseudostress tensor relating the gradient of the velocity and the pressure with the convective term, and propose an augmented pseudostress–velocity formulation for the model problem. The resulting augmented scheme is then written equivalently as a fixed point equation, so that the well-known Banach fixed point theorem, combined with the Lax–Milgram lemma, are applied to prove the unique solvability of the continuous and discrete systems. We point out that no discrete inf–sup conditions are required for the solvability analysis, and hence, in particular for the Galerkin scheme, arbitrary finite element subspaces of the respective continuous spaces can be utilized. For instance, given an integer k≥0, the Raviart–Thomas spaces of order k and continuous piecewise polynomials of degree ≤k+1 constitute feasible choices of discrete spaces for the pseudostress and the velocity, respectively, yielding optimal convergence. We also emphasize that, since the Dirichlet boundary condition becomes a natural condition, the analysis for both the continuous an discrete problems can be derived without introducing any lifting of the velocity boundary datum. In addition, we derive a reliable and efficient residual-based a posteriori error estimator for the augmented mixed method. The proof of reliability makes use of a global inf–sup condition, a Helmholtz decomposition, and local approximation properties of the Clément interpolant and Raviart–Thomas operator. On the other hand, inverse inequalities, the localization technique based on element-bubble and edge-bubble functions, approximation properties of the L2-orthogonal projector, and known results from previous works, are the main tools for proving the efficiency of the estimator. Finally, some numerical results illustrating the performance of the augmented mixed method, confirming the theoretical rate of convergence and properties of the estimator, and showing the behavior of the associated adaptive algorithms, are reported.