A low order anisotropic nonconforming characteristic finite element method for a convection-dominated transport problem

A low order anisotropic nonconforming rectangular finite element method for the convection-diffusion problem with a modified characteristic finite element scheme is studied in this paper. The O(h(2)) order error estimate in L-2-norm with respect to the space, one order higher than the expanded characteristic-mixed finite element scheme with order O(h), and the same as the conforming case for a modified characteristic finite element scheme under regular meshes, is obtained by use of some distinct properties of the interpolation operator and the mean value technique, instead of the so-called elliptic projection, which is an indispensable tool in the convergence analysis of the previous literature. Lastly, some numerical results of the element are provided to verify our theoretical analysis. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.