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.