Averaging techniques for the effective numerical solution of Symm's integral equation of the first kind

Averaging techniques for finite element error control, occasionally called ZZ estimators for the gradient recovery, enjoy a high popularity in engineering because of their striking simplicity and universality: One does not even require a PDE to apply the nonexpensive post-processing routines. Recently, averaging techniques have been mathematically proved to be reliable and efficient for various applications of the finite element method. This paper establishes a class of averaging error estimators for boundary integral methods. Symm's integral equation of the first kind with a nonlocal single-layer integral operator serves as a model equation studied both theoretically and numerically. We introduce four new error estimators which are proven to be reliable and efficient up to terms of higher order. The higher-order terms depend on the regularity of the exact solution. Several numerical experiments illustrate the theoretical results and show that the [ normally unknown] error is sharply estimated by the proposed estimators, i.e., error and estimators almost coincide.