A priori and a posteriori error analysis of a mixed DG method for the three-field quasi-Newtonian Stokes flow

In this paper we propose and analyse a new mixed-type DG method for the three-field quasi-Newtonian Stokes flow. The scheme is based on the introduction of the stress and strain tensor as further unknowns as well as the elimination of the pressure variable by means of the incompressibility constraint. As such, the resulting system involves three unknowns: the stress, the strain tensor and the velocity. All these three unknowns are approximated using discontinuous piecewise polynomials, which offers flexibility for enforcing the symmetry of the stress and the strain tensor. The unique solvability and a comprehensive convergence error analysis for all the variables are performed. All the variables are proved to converge optimally. Adaptive mesh refinement guided by a posteriori error estimator is computationally efficient, especially for problems involving singularity. In line of this mechanism we derive a residual-type a posteriori error estimator, which constitutes the second main contribution of the paper. In particular, we employ the elliptic reconstruction in conjunction with the Helmholtz decomposition to derive the a posteriori error estimator, which avoids using the averaging operator. Several numerical experiments are carried out to verify the theoretical findings. © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. All rights reserved.