Analysis of Weakly Symmetric Mixed Finite Elements for Elasticity

Abstract

We consider mixed finite element methods for linear elasticity where the symmetry of the stress tensor is weakly enforced. Both an a priori and a posteriori error analysis are given for several known families of methods that are uniformly valid in the incompressible limit. A posteriori estimates are derived for both the compressible and incompressible cases. The results are verified by numerical examples.