Generalization of robustness test procedure for error estimators. Part I: formulation for patches near kinked boundaries

In this part of paper we shall extend the formulation proposed by Babuska and co-workers for robustness patch test, for quality assessment of error estimators, to more general cases of patch locations especially in three-dimensional problems. This is performed first by finding an asymptotic finite element solution at interior parts of a problem with assumed smooth exact solution and then adding a correction part to obtain the solution near a kinked boundary irrespective of other boundary conditions at far ends of the domain. It has been shown that the solution corresponding to the correction part may be obtained in a spectral form by assuming a suitable proportionality relation between the nodal values of a mesh with repeatable pattern of macro-patches. Having found the asymptotic finite element solution, the performance of error estimators may be examined. Although in this paper we focus on the asymptotic behaviour of error estimators, the method described in this part may be used to obtain finite element solution for two/three-dimensional unbounded heat/elasticity problems with homogeneous differential equations. Some numerical results are presented to show the validity and performance of the proposed method. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.