A divergence-free finite element method for the Stokes problem with boundary correction

Abstract This paper constructs and analyzes a boundary correction finite element method for the Stokes problem based on the Scott–Vogelius pair on Clough–Tocher splits. The velocity space consists of continuous piecewise polynomials of degree k , and the pressure space consists of piecewise polynomials of degree ( k – 1) without continuity constraints. A Lagrange multiplier space that consists of continuous piecewise polynomials with respect to the boundary partition is introduced to enforce boundary conditions and to mitigate the lack of pressure-robustness. We prove several inf-sup conditions, leading to the well-posedness of the method. In addition, we show that the method converges with optimal order and the velocity approximation is divergence-free.