Recent experiences with error estimation and adaptivity, Part II: Error estimation for h-adaptive approximations on grids of triangles and quadrilaterals

In Part I, residual and flux projection error estimators for finite element approximations of scalar elliptic problems were reviewed; numerical studies on the performance of these estimators were presented for finite element approximations of the solution of Poisson's equation on uniform grids of hierarchic triangles of order p (1 p 7). Here further numerical experiments are given which also include error estimators for the vector-valued problem of plane elastostatics and implementations for h-adaptive grids of triangles and quadrilaterals which are constructed using an algorithm of equidistribution of error coupled with h-refinement or h-remeshing schemes. A detailed numerical study of several flux-projectors for h-adaptive grids of bilinear and biquadratic quadrilaterals is conducted; a flux equilibration iteration, which may be employed in some cases to improve flux projection estimates, is also included. FAor the case of grids of quadrilaterals, several versions of the element residual estimators, which differ by the approximate flux employed for the calculation of the boundary integral term in the definition of the local problems, are compared. The numerical experiments confirm the good overall performance of residual estimates and indicate that flux projection estimates, which are now operational in several commercial codes, may be divergent when they are employed to estimate the error in even order h-adaptive approximations.