A priori and a posteriori pseudostress-velocity mixed finite element error analysis for the stokes problem

The pseudostress-velocity formulation of the stationary Stokes problem allows a Raviart-Thomas mixed finite element formulation with quasi-optimal convergence and some superconvergent reconstruction of the velocity. This local postprocessing gives rise to some averaging a posteriori error estimator with explicit constants for reliable error control. Standard residual-based explicit a posteriori error estimation is shown to be reliable and efficient and motivates adaptive mesh-refining algorithms. Numerical experiments confirm our theoretical findings and illustrate the accuracy of the guaranteed upper error bounds even with reduced regularity.