A mixed finite volume method for elliptic problems

We derive a novel finite volume method for the elliptic equation, using the framework of mixed finite element methods to discretize the pressure and velocities on two different grids (covolumes), triangular (tetrahedral) mesh and control volume mesh. The new discretization is defined for tensor diffusion coefficient and well suited for heterogeneous media. When the control volumes are created by connecting the center of gravity of each triangle to the midpoints of its edges, we show that the discretization is stable and first order accurate for both scalar and vector unknowns. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2007