ERROR-ESTIMATES AND CONVERGENCE-RATES FOR VARIOUS INCOMPRESSIBLE ELEMENTS

This note reports numerical experiments on the efficiency of simple error estimates derived earlier applied to incompressible mixed or related penalty type formulations. The rate of convergence and performance of various mixed elements is compared. Numerical results from a driven cavity and an incompressible elastic problem demonstrate that the T6B1/3D and T6/3C elements give a faster rate of convergence than the T6/1D element. However, in the case of a plane extrusion analysis (stronger singularity), the rate of convergence for the T6B1/3D element drops and is inferior to that of the T6/1D, while the T6/3C element still proves superior to the other two elements.