A new residual posteriori error estimates of mixed finite element methods for convection‐diffusion‐reaction equations

Abstract

We propose and analyze a new technique for developing residual‐based a posteriori error estimates over the stress and scalar displacement error for the lowest‐order Raviart–Thomas mixed finite element discretizations of convection‐diffusion‐reaction equations in two‐dimension space. The new technique is based on the abstract error estimates, the postprocessed approximation of the scalar displacement, and on the construction of an auxiliary problem. We consider the centered and upwind‐weighted mixed schemes, and concentrate the attention on the presence of an inhomogeneous and an anisotropic diffusion‐dispersion tensor and on a possible convection dominance. Global upper bounds can be directly computed on the base of the solution of the mixed schemes without any additional cost. Local lower bounds without any saturation assumption, hold from the case where convection or reaction are not present to convection‐ or reaction‐dominated equations, and their local efficiency depends on local or global variations in coefficients similar to Péclect number. Numerical experiments are reported to show the competitive behavior of the proposed posteriori error estimates, and to confirm the theoretical findings. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 30: 593–624, 2014