A novel locking-free virtual element method for linear elasticity problems

Abstract: This paper devises a novel lowest-order conforming virtual element method (VEM) for planar linear elasticity with the pure displacement/traction boundary condition. The main trick is to view a generic polygon $K$ as a new one $\widetilde{K}$ with additional vertices consisting of interior points on edges of $K$, so that the discrete admissible space is taken as the $V_1$ type virtual element space related to the partition ${\widetilde{K}}$ instead of ${K}$. The method is shown to be uniformly convergent with the optimal rates both in $H^1$ and $L^2$ norms with respect to the Lam\'{e} constant $\lambda$. Numerical tests are presented to illustrate the good performance of the proposed VEM and confirm the theoretical results.