Stable SIP Discontinuous Galerkin Approximations of the Hydrostatic Stokes Equations

Abstract: We propose a Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) scheme for the numerical solution of the Hydrostatic Stokes equations in Oceanography. This new scheme is based on the introduction of the symmetric interior penalty (SIP) technique for the Hydrostatic Stokes mixed variational formulation. Recent research showed that stability of the mixed formulation of Primitive Equations requires LBB (Ladyzhenskaya--Babu\v{s}ka--Brezzi) inf-sup condition and an extra hydrostatic inf-sup restriction relating the pressure and the vertical velocity. This hydrostatic inf-sup condition invalidates usual Stokes continuous finite elements like Taylor-Hood $P_2/P_1$ or bubble $P_{1,b}/P_1$. Here we consider $P_k/P_k$ discontinuous finite elements and, using adequate LBB-like and hydrostatic discrete inf-sup conditions we can demonstrate stability of the SIP DG scheme in the natural energy norm for this problem. Finally, according numerical tests are provided.