The Brinkman model describes flow of fluid in complex porous media with a high-contrast permeability coefficient such that the flow is dominated by Darcy in some regions and by Stokes in others. A weak Galerkin (WG) finite element method for solving the Brinkman equations in two or three dimensional spaces by using polynomials is developed and analyzed. The WG method is designed by using the generalized functions and their weak derivatives which are defined as generalized distributions. The variational form we considered in this paper is based on two gradient operators which is different from the usual gradient-divergence operators for Brinkman equations. The WG method is highly flexible by allowing the use of discontinuous functions on arbitrary polygons or polyhedra with certain shape regularity. Optimal-order error estimates are established for the corresponding WG finite element solutions in various norms. Some computational results are presented to demonstrate the robustness, reliability, accuracy, and flexibility of the WG method for the Brinkman equations.

The aim of this paper is to give a simple, introductory presentation of the extension of the Virtual Element Method to the discretization of H(div)-conforming vector fields (or, more generally, of (n − 1) − Cochains). As we shall see, the methods presented here can be seen as extensions of the so-called BDM family to deal with more general element geometries (such as polygons with an almost arbitrary geometry). For the sake of simplicity, we limit ourselves to the 2-dimensional case, with the aim of making the basic philosophy clear. However, we consider an arbitrary degree of accuracy k (the Virtual Element analogue of dealing with polynomials of arbitrary order in the Finite Element Framework).

Compatible schemes localize degrees of freedom according to the physical nature of the underlying fields and operate a clear distinction between topological laws and closure relations. For elliptic problems, the cornerstone in the scheme design is the discrete Hodge operator linking gradients to fluxes by means of a dual mesh, while a structure-preserving discretization is employed for the gradient and divergence operators. The discrete Hodge operator is sparse, symmetric positive definite and is assembled cellwise from local operators. We analyze two schemes depending on whether the potential degrees of freedom are attached to the vertices or to the cells of the primal mesh. We derive new functional analysis results on the discrete gradient that are the counterpart of the Sobolev embeddings. Then, we identify the two design properties of the local discrete Hodge operators yielding optimal discrete energy error estimates. Additionally, we show how these operators can be built from local nonconforming gradient reconstructions using a dual barycentric mesh. In this case, we also prove an optimal L2-error estimate for the potential for smooth solutions. Links with existing schemes (finite elements, finite volumes, mimetic finite differences) are discussed. Numerical results are presented on three-dimensional polyhedral meshes.

We developed a mimetic finite difference method for solving elliptic equations with tensor coefficients on polyhedral meshes. The first-order convergence estimates in a mesh-dependent H1 norm are derived.