Penalty finite element approximations for the Stokes equations by L2 projection

Abstract This paper considers the penalty finite element method for the Stokes equations, based on some stable finite elements space pair (Xh, Mh) that do satisfy the discrete inf–sup condition. Theoretical results show that the penalty error converges as fast as one should expect from the order of the elements. Moreover, the penalty finite element method by L2 projection can improve the penalty error estimates. Finally, we confirm these results by a series of numerical experiments. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.