Each H^{1/2}-stable projection yields convergence and quasi-optimality of adaptive FEM with inhomogeneous Dirichlet data in R^d

Abstract

We consider the solution of second order elliptic PDEs in $\R^d$ with inhomogeneous Dirichlet data by means of an $h$-adaptive FEM with fixed polynomial order $p\in\N$. As model example serves the Poisson equation with mixed Dirichlet-Neumann boundary conditions, where the inhomogeneous Dirichlet data are discretized by use of an $H^{1/2}$-stable projection, for instance, the $L^2$-projection for $p=1$ or the Scott-Zhang projection for general $p\ge1$. For error estimation, we use a residual error estimator which includes the Dirichlet data oscillations. We prove that each $H^{1/2}$-stable projection yields convergence of the adaptive algorithm even with quasi-optimal convergence rate. Numerical experiments with the $L^2$- and Scott-Zhang projection conclude the work.