Computational Serendipity and Tensor Product Finite Element Differential Forms
The SMAI Journal of computational mathematics, Volume 5 (2019), pp. 1-21.

Many conforming finite elements on squares and cubes are elegantly classified into families by the language of finite element exterior calculus and presented in the Periodic Table of the Finite Elements. Use of these elements varies, based principally on the ease or difficulty in finding a “computational basis” of shape functions for element families. The tensor product family, 𝒬 r - Λ k , is most commonly used because computational basis functions are easy to state and implement. The trimmed and non-trimmed serendipity families, 𝒮 r - Λ k and 𝒮 r Λ k respectively, are used less frequently because they are newer to the community and, until now, lacked a straightforward technique for computational basis construction. This represents a missed opportunity for computational efficiency as the serendipity elements in general have fewer degrees of freedom than elements of equivalent accuracy from the tensor product family. Accordingly, in pursuit of easy adoption of the serendipity families, we present complete lists of computational bases for both serendipity families, for any order r1 and for any differential form order 0kn, for problems in dimension n=2 or 3. The bases are defined via shared subspace structures, allowing easy comparison of elements across families. We use and include code in SageMath to find, list, and verify these computational basis functions.

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Published online:
DOI: 10.5802/smai-jcm.41
Classification: 65N30
Keywords: Finite element differential forms, finite element exterior calculus, serendipity elements, cubical meshes, cubes

Andrew Gillette 1; Tyler Kloefkorn 2; Victoria Sanders 1

1 Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
2 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow, hosted at the National Science Foundation, Alexandria, Virginia, USA
License: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0
Copyrights: The authors retain unrestricted copyrights and publishing rights
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Andrew Gillette; Tyler Kloefkorn; Victoria Sanders. Computational Serendipity and Tensor Product  Finite Element Differential Forms. The SMAI Journal of computational mathematics, Volume 5 (2019), pp. 1-21. doi : 10.5802/smai-jcm.41. https://smai-jcm.centre-mersenne.org/articles/10.5802/smai-jcm.41/

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