On the convergence of the Rhie–Chow stabilized Box method for the Stokes problem

The finite volume method (FVM) is widely adopted in many different applications because of its built-in conservation properties, its ability to deal with arbitrary mesh and its computational efficiency. In this work, we consider the Rhie–Chow stabilized Box method (RCBM) for the approximation of the Stokes problem. The Box method (BM) is a piecewise linear Petrov–Galerkin formulation on the Voronoi dual mesh of a Delaunay triangulation, whereas the Rhie–Chow (RC) stabilization is a well known stabilization technique for FVM. The first part of the article provides a variational formulation of the RC stabilization and discusses the validity of crucial properties relevant for the well-posedness and convergence of RCBM. Moreover, a numerical exploration of the convergence properties of the method on 2D and 3D test cases is presented. The last part of the article considers the theoretically justification of the well-posedness of RCBM and the experimentally observed convergence rates. This latter justification hinges upon suitable assumptions, whose validity is numerically explored.