Free-Slip Boundary Condition in Fluid Flow

A R-T element has no x-component to constrain. Consider

and for instance the basis functions:


Then you see that the basis function is vector valued. I.e. there is only three degrees of freedom, that are scalar valued.

u_h=\sum_{i=0}^2 c_i \mathcal{F}^{\mathrm{div}}\phi_i(x)
where \mathcal{F}^{\mathrm{div}} is the contravariant Piola mapping, see for instance: DefElement

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