A new mixed finite element method for arbitrary element pair for a quasi-static nonlinear permeability thermo-poroelasticity model

Abstract: In this paper, we develop a multiphysics finite element method for solving the quasi-static thermo-poroelasticity model with nonlinear permeability. The model involves multiple physical processes such as deformation, pressure, diffusion and heat transfer. To reveal the multi-physical processes of deformation, diffusion and heat transfer, we reformulate the original model into a fluid coupled problem that is general Stokes equation coupled with two reaction-diffusion equations. Then, we prove the existence and uniqueness of weak solution for the original problem by the $B$-operator technique and by sequence approximation for the reformulated problem. As for the reformulated problem we propose a fully discrete finite element method which can use arbitrary finite element pairs to solve the displacement $\bu$ pressure $\tau $ and variable $\varpi,\varsigma$, and the backward Euler method for time discretization. Finally, we give the stability analysis of the above proposed method, also we prove that the fully discrete multiphysics finite element method has an optimal convergence order. Numerical experiments show that the proposed method can achieve good results under different finite element pairs and are consistent with the theoretical analysis.