Stabilized finite element schemes with LBB-stable elements for incompressible flows

We study stabilized FE approximations of SUPG type to the incompressible Navier-Stokes problem. Revisiting the analysis for the linearized model, we show that for conforming LBB-stable elements the design of the stabilization parameters for many practical flows differs from that commonly suggested in literature and initially designed for the case of equal-order approximation. Then we analyze a reduced SUPG scheme often used in practice for LBB-stable elements. To provide the reduced scheme with appropriate stability estimates we introduce a modified LBB condition which is proved for a family of FE approximations. The analysis is given for the linearized equations. Numerical experiments for some linear and nonlinear benchmark problems support the theoretical results.