A class of finite-element methods for singularly perturbed second-order differential equations (Q1175204)

The paper deals with singular perturbed boundary value problems of the form \[ \varepsilon u''(x)+a(x)u'(x)=f(x) \text{ for } x\in[0,1],\quad u(0)=\alpha,\quad u(1)=\beta \] where \(\varepsilon\) is a small parameter, \(a\) and \(f\) are sufficiently smooth functions with \(a(x)>0\). The problem is solved approximately by a family of Petrov-Galerkin methods: piecewise linear elements are used as test functions and special quadratic elements --- called comparison-upwind elements --- are used as trial functions; a nonstandard quadrature rule is used to evaluate the corresponding inner products. For two particular methods of this family it is shown that they are uniformly convergent (with respect to \(\varepsilon\)) to the orders \(O(h)\) and \(O(h^ 2)\) at the nodes. Global error bounds are derived in \(L^ 1\) and \(L^ 2\). Some numerical results demonstrate high accuracy at low computational costs.