On the enforcement of the zero mean pressure condition in the spectral element approximation of the Stokes problem

This paper considers the spectral element approximation of the Stokes problem and the conditioning of the resulting discrete problem. The well-posedness of the variational formulation of the Stokes problem and, in particular, the uniqueness of the pressure has been demonstrated when the subspace of square-integrable functions having vanishing mean is chosen for the pressure space. In the discrete setting a conforming subspace is chosen for the discrete pressure space and the analysis of the discrete problem is based on this choice. However, this space is not used in practical implementations of finite or spectral element methods for the Stokes problem. In this paper it is shown how the zero volume condition on the pressure may be accommodated within the trial space by modifying the continuity equation in a consistent manner. The dependence of the condition number of the Uzawa operator and the accuracy of the spectral element approximation on the weighting factor is investigated.