Verification of functional a posteriori error estimates for obstacle problem in 2D

Petr Harasim, Jan Valdman

Published 2014-03-26Version 1

We verify functional a posteriori error estimate proposed by S. Repin for a class of obstacle problems. The obstacle problem is formulated as a quadratic minimization problem with constrains equivalently formulated as a variational inequality. New benchmarks with known analytical solutions in 2D are constructed based on 1D benchmark introduced by P. Harasim and J. Valdman. Numerical approximation of the obstacle problem is obtained by the finite element method using bilinear elements on a rectangular mesh. Error of the approximation is meassured in the energy norm and bounded from above by a functional majorant, whose value is minimized with respect to unknown gradient field discretized by Raviart-Thomas elements and Lagrange multipliers field discretized by piecewise constant functions.