2015, Bringmann, Philipp, Carstensen, Carsten, Merdon, Christian

The pseudostress approximation of the Stokes equations rewrites the stationary Stokes equations with pure (but possibly inhomogeneous) Dirichlet boundary conditions as another (equivalent) mixed scheme based on a stress in H (div) and the velocity in L2. Any standard mixed finite element function space can be utilized for this mixed formulation, e.g. the Raviart-Thomas discretization which is related to the Crouzeix-Raviart nonconforming finite element scheme in the lowest-order case. The effective and guaranteed a posteriori error control for this nonconforming velocity-oriented discretization can be generalized to the error control of some piecewise quadratic velocity approximation that is related to the discrete pseudostress. The analysis allows for local inf-sup constants which can be chosen in a global partition to improve the estimation. Numerical examples provide strong evidence for an effective and guaranteed error control with very small overestimation factors even for domains with large anisotropy.