Richardson extrapolation and defect correction of mixed finite element methods for integro-differential equations in porous media

Asymptotic error expansions in the sense of L∞-norm for the Raviart-Thomas mixed finite element approximation by the lowest-order rectangular element associated with a class of parabolic integro-differential equations on a rectangular domain are derived, such that the Richardson extrapolation of two different schemes and an interpolation defect correction can be applied to increase the accuracy of the approximations for both the vector field and the scalar field by the aid of an interpolation postprocessing technique, and the key point in deriving them is the establishment of the error estimates for the mixed regularized Green’s functions with memory terms presented in R. Ewing at al., Int. J. Numer. Anal. Model 2 (2005), 301–328. As a result of all these higher order numerical approximations, they can be used to generate a posteriori error estimators for this mixed finite element approximation.