A Nitsche extended finite element method for incompressible elasticity with discontinuous modulus of elasticity

Journal article, 2009

In this note we propose a finite element method for incompressible (or compressible) elasticity problems with discontinuous modulus of elasticity (or, if compressible, Poisson’s ratio). The problem is written on mixed form using P1-continuous displacements and elementwise P0 pressures, leading to the possibility of eliminating the pressure beforehand in the compressible case. In the incompressible case, the method is augmented by a stabilization term, penalizing the pressure jumps. We show a priori error estimates under certain regularity hypothesis. In particular we prove that if the exact solution is sufficiently smooth in each subdomain then the convergence order is optimal.