A finite element method for nearly incompressible elasticity problems

Abstract. A nite element method is considered for dealing with nearly in-compressible material. In the case of large deformations the nonlinear charac-ter of the volumetric contribution has to be taken into account. The proposed mixed method avoids volumetric locking also in this case and is robust for !1 (with being the well-known Lame constant). Error estimates for the L1 norm are crucial in the control of the nonlinear terms. 1