Criteria to Achieve Nearly Optimal Meshes in the h-Adaptive Finite Element Method

International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, Wiley, Vol 39, pp.4039-4061, 1996

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

Departamento de Ingenieria Meciznica y de Mazeriales, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia,
Camino de Vera, 14, 46022 Valencia, Spain

Abstract
Five Adaptive Modification Strategies (AMSs) are studied as means to obtain nearly optimal meshes using an adaptive finite element modelling system based on the h-version of the FEM. These strategies include the method traditionally seem in the literature' as well as four additional methods. The five strategies are tested over five numerical examples, one of them producing convergence oscillations in one example. The principal characteristic of our system is that it permits the user to control certain parameters of the adaptive process, which contributes to an improvement in the results.