Finite Element Methods for the Incompressible Stokes Equations with Variable Viscosity

Key words Incompressible Stokes equations, variable viscosity, finite element error analysis, dependency on the viscosity. MSC (2010) 65N30 Finite element error estimates are derived for the incompressible Stokes equations with variable viscosity. The ratio of the supremum and the infimum of the viscosity appears in the error bounds. Numerical studies show that this ratio can be observed sometimes. However, often the numerical results show a weaker dependency on the viscosity