Bounded, Commuting, Discrete-trace Preserving Projections

TL;DR

This paper develops bounded, commuting projections for the 3D de Rham complex that preserve boundary traces and are stable locally, enabling improved data extension and lifting in finite element methods.

Contribution

It introduces novel projections with trace-preserving and stability properties, enhancing finite element analysis for 3D de Rham complexes.

Findings

Projections are locally defined and stable in the graph norm.

They preserve boundary trace for piecewise polynomial functions.

Applications include stable data liftings and optimal extension results.

Abstract

We construct bounded, commuting projections for the three-dimensional de Rham complex with the additional property that the projections preserve the trace of functions/fields if the latter is a piecewise polynomial in the appropriate trace space. The projections are locally defined and stable in the graph norm. More precisely, the part of the graph norm involving the exterior derivative only involves the oscillation of this derivative in a narrow strip of elements touching the boundary and weighted by the local mesh size. Moreover, the projections are $L^2$-stable locally when acting on functions/fields whose exterior derivative is a piecewise polynomial in the appropriate space. We present two salient applications of the present bounded, commuting, discrete-trace preserving projections: the construction of stable liftings of piecewise polynomial data and an optimality result on the discrete versus continuous extension of piecewise polynomial data.