Mixed finite volume methods

We present in this paper a new Finite Volume Methods for elliptic equation, based on a mixed primal‐dual formulation. In this approach the fluxes are introduced as unknowns of the problem and we use two dual meshes. This method is called ‘mixed finite volume method (MFV)’. We recall first the theory of generalized mixed formulation and then we develop error estimates in the case where two dual rectangular meshes or two dual triangular meshes are used. Finally, we present some numerical results and we calculate for each example the L2‐error relative to the primal and dual unknowns. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.