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.