ABSTRACT

SONIA GARCIA! Department of Mathematics, U .S . Naval Academy, Annapolis , MD 21402 , USA

S0REN JENSEN2 Department of Mathematics , University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD 21228, USA

Abstract . We investigate a parabolic problem from the point of view of stability and approximation properties of increasing order mixed (in space) finite element methods . Previous estimates for the Raviart-Thomas projection are proven to be sharp . We analyze the effects of mixed finite element discretization in space to present transient error estimates (for semi discrete mixed finite element methods) .