A posteriori error analysis of an augmented mixed finite element method for Darcy flow

Abstract

[Abstract] We develop an a posteriori error analysis of residual type of stabilized mixed finite element method for Darcy flow. The stabilized formulation is obtained by adding to the standard dual-mixed approach suitable residual type terms arising from Darcy’s law and the mass conservation equation. We derive sufficient conditions on the stabilization parameters that guarantee that the augmented variational formulation and the corresponding Galerkin scheme are well-posed. Then, we obtain a simple a posteriori error estimator and prove that it is reliable and locally efficient. Finally, we provide several numerical experiments that illustrate the theoretical results and support the use of the corresponding adaptive algorithm in practice.