The discrete duality finite volume method for a class of quasi‐Newtonian Stokes flows

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a discrete duality finite volume (DDFV) scheme for the incompressible quasi-Newtonian Stokes equation. The DDFV method is based on the use of discrete differential operators which satisfy some duality properties analogous to their continuous counterparts in a discrete sense. The DDFV method has a great ability to handle general geometries and meshes. In addition, every component of the velocity gradient can be reconstructed directly, which makes it suitable to deal with the nonlinear terms in the quasi-Newtonian Stokes equation. We prove that the proposed DDFV scheme is uniquely solvable and of first-order convergence in the discrete L 2 -norms for the velocity, the strain rate tensor, and the pressure, respectively. Ample numerical tests are provided to highlight the performance of the proposed DDFV scheme and to validate the theoretical error analysis, in particular on locally refined nonconforming and polygonal meshes. KEYWORDS discrete duality finite volume method, distorted, nonconforming and polygonal meshes, quasi-Newtonian Stokes equation 1