LAUSR

This article is concerned with the discretisation of the Stokes equations on time-dependent domains in an Eulerian coordinate framework. Our work can be seen as an extension of a recent paper by Lehrenfeld and Olshanskii (ESAIM: M2AN 53(2):585–614, 2019), where BDF-type time-stepping schemes are studied for a parabolic equation on moving domains. For space discretisation, a geometrically unfitted finite element discretisation is applied in combination with Nitsche’s method to impose boundary conditions. Physically undefined values of the solution at previous time-steps are extended implicitly by means of so-called ghost penalty stabilisations. We derive a complete a priori error analysis of the discretisation error in space and time, including optimal $$L^2(L^2)$$ L 2 ( L 2 ) -norm error bounds for the velocities. Finally, the theoretical results are substantiated with numerical examples.