Quasi-optimal mesh sequence construction through Smoothed Adaptive Finite Element Methods

Abstract

We propose a new algorithm for Adaptive Finite Element Methods (AFEMs) based on smoothing iterations (S-AFEM), for linear, second-order, elliptic partial differential equations (PDEs). The algorithm is inspired by the ascending phase of the V-cycle multigrid method: we replace accurate algebraic solutions in intermediate cycles of the classical AFEM with the application of a prolongation step, followed by a fixed number of few smoothing steps. Even though these intermediate solutions are far from the exact algebraic solutions, their a-posteriori error estimation produces a refinement pattern that is substantially equivalent to the one that would be generated by classical AFEM, at a considerable fraction of the computational cost. We quantify rigorously how the error propagates throughout the algorithm, and we provide a connection with classical a posteriori error analysis. A series of numerical experiments highlights the efficiency and the computational speedup of S-AFEM.