How a nonconvergent recovered Hessian works in mesh adaptation

Hessian recovery has been commonly used in mesh adaptation for obtaining the required magnitude and direction information of the solution error. Unfortunately, a recovered Hessian from a linear finite element approximation is nonconvergent in general as the mesh is refined. It has been observed numerically that adaptive meshes based on such a nonconvergent recovered Hessian can nevertheless lead to an optimal error in the finite element approximation. This also explains why Hessian recovery is still widely used despite its nonconvergence. In this paper we develop an error bound for the linear finite element solution of a general boundary value problem under a mild assumption on the closeness of the recovered Hessian to the exact one. Numerical results show that this closeness assumption is satisfied by the recovered Hessian obtained with commonly used Hessian recovery methods. Moreover, it is shown that the finite element error changes gradually with the closeness of the recovered Hessian. This provides an explanation on how a nonconvergent recovered Hessian works in mesh adaptation.Comment: Revised (improved proofs and a better example

Convergence of adaptive mixed finite element method for convection-diffusion-reaction equations

We prove the convergence of an adaptive mixed finite element method (AMFEM) for (nonsymmetric) convection-diffusion-reaction equations. The convergence result holds from the cases where convection or reaction is not present to convection-or reaction-dominated problems. A novel technique of analysis is developed without any quasi orthogonality for stress and displacement variables, and without marking the oscillation dependent on discrete solutions and data. We show that AMFEM is a contraction of the error of the stress and displacement variables plus some quantity. Numerical experiments confirm the theoretical results.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1312.645