Residual a posteriori error estimators for contact problems in elasticity

Patrick Hild (1) , Serge Nicaise (2)

1 LMB - Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Besançon (UMR 6623)
2 LAMAV - Laboratoire de Mathématiques et leurs Applications de Valenciennes - EA 4015

This paper is concerned with the unilateral contact problem in linear elasticity. We define two a posteriori error estimators of residual type to evaluate the accuracy of the mixed finite element approximation of the contact problem. Upper and lower bounds of the discretization error are proved for both estimators and several computations are performed to illustrate the theoretical results.

Mots clés: unilateral contact; Mixed finite element method; a posteriori error estimates; residuals; unilateral contact.

Domaines: Analyse numérique [math.NA]

Patrick Hild, Serge Nicaise. Residual a posteriori error estimators for contact problems in elasticity. ESAIM: Mathematical Modelling and Numerical Analysis, 2007, 41 (5), pp.897-923. ⟨10.1051/m2an:2007045⟩. ⟨hal-00466479⟩