Minimum energy triangulations for elliptic problems (Q1179085)

The finite element method for elliptic problems is considered, regarding minimum energy triangulations, i.e. triangulations for which the finite element solution has the minimal energy. It is shown that the well-known Delaunay triangulation of a set of points in \(R^ 2\) is a minimum energy triangulation for the energy functional associated with the nonhomogeneous Laplace equation. The authors present algorithms for constructing locally minimal energy triangulations and outline efficient schemes for computing suboptimal triangulations. By means of numerical results of several model problems it is shown that such sub-minimal energy triangulations can significantly improve the quality of the approximate solution.