A posteriorierror analysis of a cell-centered finite volume method for semilinear elliptic problems (Q732155)

The authors analyze the cell-centered finite volume scheme applied to a convection-diffusion-reaction problem. The a posteriori estimate derived in this paper involves a variational analysis, computable residuals to measure the local introduction of the error and the generalized Green's function solving the adjoint problem to quantify the global effects of accumulation and propagation of error in the quantity of interest. In order to use the variational analysis and the adjoint operator, the authors employ an equivalence between the finite volume method and the lowest order Raviart-Thomas mixed finite element method with special quadrature for elliptic problems with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions. Next, the a posteriori error analysis is carried out on the lowest order Raviart-Thomas mixed method and an error representation is derived for the equivalent finite volume scheme. The resulting estimate is very accurate, even on coarse meshes. The last section of the paper presents various numerical experiments that illustrate the usefulness of the method.