Adaptive finite elements

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Sven Beuchler

Dec. 4, 2015, 12:15 p.m. BA 9912

Many problems in applied sciences are described by means of partial differential equations. Nowadays, the finite element method (FEM) belongs to the most efficient methods for the computer simulation of such processes.
Usually the finite element mesh is uniformly refined which leads to huge discrete problems. In adaptive finite element methods, a sequence of meshes is obtained from the initial mesh by refining the mesh only in part in which the estimated error of the solution is large.
This lecture gives an overview about finite elements. We start with some motivating examples and investigate the ingredients of an adaptive algorithm