In this work we present and analyse a mixed finite element method for the coupling of fluid flow with porous media flow. The flows are governed by the Navier--Stokes and the Darcy--Forchheimer equations, respectively, and the corresponding transmission conditions are given by mass conservation, balance of normal forces, and the Beavers--Joseph--Saffman law. We consider the standard mixed formulation in the Navier--Stokes domain and the dual-mixed one in the Darcy--Forchheimer region, which yields the introduction of the trace of the porous medium pressure as a suitable Lagrange multiplier. The well-posedness of the problem is achieved by combining a fixed-point strategy, classical results on nonlinear monotone operators and the well-known Schauder and Banach fixed-point theorems. As for the associated Galerkin scheme we employ Bernardi--Raugel and Raviart--Thomas elements for the velocities, and piecewise constant elements for the pressures and the Lagrange multiplier, whereas its existence and uniqueness of solution is established similarly to its continuous counterpart, using in this case the Brouwer and Banach fixed-point theorems, respectively. We show stability, convergence, and a priori error estimates for the associated Galerkin scheme. Finally, we report some numerical examples confirming the predicted rates of convergence, and illustrating the performance of the method.

We introduce and analyse an augmented mixed variational formulation for the coupling of the Stokes and heat equations. More precisely, the underlying model consists of the Stokes equation suggested by the Oldroyd model for viscoelastic flow, coupled with the heat equation through a temperature-dependent viscosity of the fluid and a convective term. The original unknowns are the polymeric part of the extra-stress tensor, the velocity, the pressure, and the temperature of the fluid. In turn, for convenience of the analysis, the strain tensor, the vorticity, and an auxiliary symmetric tensor are introduced as further unknowns. This allows to join the polymeric and solvent viscosities in an adimensional viscosity, and to eliminate the polymeric part of the extra-stress tensor and the pressure from the system, which, together with the solvent part of the extra-stress tensor, are easily recovered later on through suitable postprocessing formulae. In this way, a fully mixed approach is applied, in which the heat flux vector is incorporated as an additional unknown as well. Furthermore, since the convective term in the heat equation forces both the velocity and the temperature to live in a smaller space than usual, we augment the variational formulation by using the constitutive and equilibrium equations, the relation defining the strain and vorticity tensors, and the Dirichlet boundary condition on the temperature. The resulting augmented scheme is then written equivalently as a fixed-point equation, so that the well-known Schauder and Banach theorems, combined with the Lax-Milgram theorem and certain regularity assumptions, are applied to prove the unique solvability of the continuous system. As for the associated Galerkin scheme, whose solvability is established similarly to the continuous case by using the Brouwer fixed-point and Lax–Milgram theorems, we employ Raviart–Thomas approximations of order k for the stress tensor and the heat flux vector, continuous piecewise polynomials of order ≤ k + 1 for velocity and temperature, and piecewise polynomials of order ≤ k for the strain tensor and the vorticity. Finally, we derive optimal a priori error estimates and provide several numerical results illustrating the good performance of the scheme and confirming the theoretical rates of convergence.

We propose and analyze an augmented mixed finite element method for the coupling of fluid flow with porous media flow. The flows are governed by a class of nonlinear Navier–Stokes and linear Darcy equations, respectively, and the transmission conditions are given by mass conservation, balance of normal forces, and the Beavers–Joseph–Saffman law. We apply dual-mixed formulations in both domains, and the nonlinearity involved in the Navier–Stokes region is handled by setting the strain and vorticity tensors as auxiliary unknowns. In turn, since the transmission conditions become essential, they are imposed weakly, which yields the introduction of the traces of the porous media pressure and the fluid velocity as the associated Lagrange multipliers. Furthermore, since the convective term in the fluid forces the velocity to live in a smaller space than usual, we augment the variational formulation with suitable Galerkin type terms arising from the constitutive and equilibrium equations of the Navier–Stokes equations, and the relation defining the strain and vorticity tensors. The resulting augmented scheme is then written equivalently as a fixed point equation, so that the well-known Schauder and Banach theorems, combined with classical results on bijective monotone operators, are applied to prove the unique solvability of the continuous and discrete systems. In particular, given an integer

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