Spectral Element Methods a Priori and a Posteriori Error Estimates for Penalized Unilateral Obstacle Problem

The purpose of this paper is the determination of the numerical solution of a classical unilateral stationary elliptic obstacle problem. The numerical technique combines Moreau-Yoshida penalty and spectral finite element approximations. The penalized method transforms the obstacle problem into a family of semilinear partial differential equations. The discretization uses a non-overlapping spectral finite element method with Legendre–Gauss–Lobatto nodal basis using a conforming mesh. The strategy is based on approximating the solution using a spectral finite element method. In addition, by coupling the penalty and the discretization parameters, we prove a priori and a posteriori error estimates where reliability and efficiency of the estimators are shown for Legendre spectral finite element method. Such estimators can be used to construct adaptive methods for obstacle problems. Moreover, numerical results are given to corroborate our error estimates.