A new three‐field formulation of the biharmonic problem and its finite element discretization

We consider a new three‐field formulation of the biharmonic problem. The solution, the gradient and the Lagrange multiplier are the three unknowns in the formulation. Adding a stabilization term in the discrete setting we can use the standard Lagrange finite element to discretize the solution, whereas we use the Raviart‐Thomas finite element to discretize the gradient. The Lagrange multipliers are constructed to achieve the optimal error estimate. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the performance of our approach.