The material covered by this book has been taught by one of the authors in a post-graduate course on Numerical Analysis at the University Pierre et Marie Curie of Paris. It is an extended version of a previous text (cf. Girault & Raviart [32J) published in 1979 by Springer-Verlag in its series: Lecture Notes in Mathematics. In the last decade, many engineers and mathematicians have concentrated their efforts on the finite element solution of the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible flows. The purpose of this book is to provide a fairly comprehen sive treatment of the most recent developments in that field. To stay within reasonable bounds, we have restricted ourselves to the case of stationary prob lems although the time-dependent problems are of fundamental importance. This topic is currently evolving rapidly and we feel that it deserves to be covered by another specialized monograph. We have tried, to the best of our ability, to present a fairly exhaustive treatment of the finite element methods for inner flows. On the other hand however, we have entirely left out the subject of exterior problems which involve radically different techniques, both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view. Also, we have neither discussed the implemen tation of the finite element methods presented by this book, nor given any explicit numerical result. This field is extensively covered by Peyret & Taylor [64J and Thomasset [82].

Originally published in 1977, the book is devoted to the theory and numerical analysis of the Navier-Stokes equations for viscous incompressible fluid. On the theoretical side, results related to the existence, the uniqueness, and, in some cases, the regularity of solutions are presented. On the numerical side, various approaches to the approximation of Navier-Stokes problems by discretization are considered, such as the finite dereference method, the finite element method, and the fractional steps method. The problems of stability and convergence for numerical methods are treated as completely as possible. The new material in the present book (as compared to the preceding 1984 edition) is an appendix reproducing a survey article written in 1998. This appendix touches upon a few aspects not addressed in the earlier editions, in particular a short derivation of the Navier-Stokes equations from the basic conservation principles in continuum mechanics, further historical perspectives, and indications on new developments in the area. The appendix also surveys some aspects of the related Euler equations and the compressible Navier-Stokes equations. The book is written in the style of a textbook and the author has attempted to make the treatment self-contained. It can be used as a textbook or a reference book for researchers. Prerequisites for reading the book include some familiarity with the Navier-Stokes equations and some knowledge of functional analysis and Sololev spaces.

The analysis of singular perturbed differential equations began early in this century, when approximate solutions were constructed from asymptotic ex pansions. (Preliminary attempts appear in the nineteenth century [vD94].) This technique has flourished since the mid-1960s. Its principal ideas and methods are described in several textbooks. Nevertheless, asymptotic ex pansions may be impossible to construct or may fail to simplify the given problem; then numerical approximations are often the only option. The systematic study of numerical methods for singular perturbation problems started somewhat later - in the 1970s. While the research frontier has been steadily pushed back, the exposition of new developments in the analysis of numerical methods has been neglected. Perhaps the only example of a textbook that concentrates on this analysis is [DMS80], which collects various results for ordinary differential equations, but many methods and techniques that are relevant today (especially for partial differential equa tions) were developed after 1980.Thus contemporary researchers must comb the literature to acquaint themselves with earlier work. Our purposes in writing this introductory book are twofold. First, we aim to present a structured account of recent ideas in the numerical analysis of singularly perturbed differential equations. Second, this important area has many open problems and we hope that our book will stimulate further investigations.Our choice of topics is inevitably personal and reflects our own main interests.