Discontinuous Galerkin methods for the Stokes equations using divergence-free approximations

A Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method with solenoidal approximation for the simulation of incompressible flow is proposed. It is applied to the solution of the Stokes equations. The Interior Penalty Method is employed to construct the DG weak form. For every element, the approximation space for the velocity field is decomposed as direct sum of a solenoidal space and an irrotational space. This allows to split the DG weak form in two uncoupled problems: the first one solves for the velocity and the hybrid pressure (pressure along the mesh edges) and the second one allows the computation of the pressure in the element interior. Furthermore, the introduction of an extra penalty term leads to an alternative DG formulation for the computation of solenoidal velocities with no presence of pressure terms. Pressure can then be computed as a post-process of the velocity solution. Numerical examples demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodologies. Copyright c © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.