Residual flux-based a posteriori error estimates for finite volume and related locally conservative methods (Q957939)

The author derives a posteriori error estimates for the discretization of the \(2D\) and \(3D\) convection-diffusion-reaction equations \[ -\nabla \cdot \left( {\mathbf S}\nabla p\right) +\nabla \cdot p{\mathbf w}+rp=f\text{ in } \Omega , p=g\text{ on }\Gamma _D,\;-{\mathbf S}\nabla p\cdot n=u\;on\;\Gamma _N, \] where \textbf{S} is an inhomogeneous and anisotropic diffusion-dispersion tensor, \(r\) is a reaction function and \textbf{w} is a possibly dominating velocity field. The estimates are valid for any locally conservative method and they are established in the energy (semi)norm for a locally postprocessed approximate solution preserving the conservative fluxes. The estimates are fully computable and locally efficient and they can serve both as indicators for an adaptive refinement and for the actual control of the error. They are semi-robust in the sense that the local efficiency constant only depends on local variations in the coefficients and becomes optimal as the local Péclet number gets sufficiently small. Numerical experiments confirm their accuracy.