Anisotropic interpolation error estimates for isoparametric quadrilateral finite elements (Q1382776)

Anisotropic local interpolation error estimates are derived for quadrilateral and hexahedral Lagrangian finite elements with straight edges. Affine elements (parallelepipeds) with arbitrarily high degree of the shape functions are considered at the beginning and then estimates for certain classes of more general, isoparametric elements are obtained making use of a careful examination of the multilinear map. An application of the theory is presented for the reaction-diffusion problem in a polygonal domain. The boundary layers for this problem are resolved applying anisotropic trapezoidal elements.