Sufficient conditions for uniform convergence on layer-adapted grids

We study convergence properties of the simple upwind difference scheme and a Galerkin finite element method on generalized Shishkin grids. We derive conditions on the mesh-characterizing function that are sufficient for the convergence of the method, uniformly with respect to the perturbation parameter. These conditions are easy to check and enable one to immediately deduce the rate of convergence. Numerical experiments support these theoretical results and indicate that the estimates are sharp. The analysis is set in one dimension, but can be easily generalized to tensor product meshes in 2D. AMS Subject Classifications: 65L10, 65L12, 65L60.