A feed-back approach to error control in finite element methods: Application to linear elasticity

Recently a refined approach to error control in finite element (FE) discretisations has been proposed, Becker and Rannacher (1995b), (1996), which uses weighted a posteriori error estimates derived via duality arguments. The conventional strategies for mesh refinement in FE models of problems from elasticity theory are mostly based on a posteriori error estimates in the energy norm. Such estimates reflect the approximation properties of the finite element ansatz by local interpolation constants while the stability properties of the continuous model enter through a global coercivity constant. However, meshes generated on the basis of such global error estimates are not appropriate in cases where the domain consists of very heterogeneous materials and for the computation of local quantities, e.g., point values or contour integrals. This deficiency is cured by using certain local norms of the dual solution directly as weights multiplying the local residuals of the computed solution. In general, these weights have to be evaluated numerically in the course of the refinement process, yielding almost optimal meshes for various kinds of error measures. This feed-back approach is developed here for primal as well as mixed FE discretisations of the fundamental problem in linear elasticity.