Anisotropic mesh refinement for finite element methods based on error reduction (Q2493949)

An anisotropic mesh refinement for finite element methods based on error reduction is proposed. The anisotropic adaptive method requires that an error estimator should provide information about location and direction of stretching in order to refine the current mesh. This information is used to obtain a new mesh that is better adapted to the solution. Main result: Anisotropic adaptive methods give a bigger saving in terms of computational cost (number of elements and degrees of freedom) than the isotropic ones if stretched elements are placed appropriately. An estimator of the error reduction when a single degree of freedom is added to the triangulations is obtained. A more robust estimator for the error reduction on anisotropic triangulations is given. An anisotropic refinement algorithm is constructed and numerical tests are presented.