An a posteriori error estimator for discontinuous Galerkin methods for non-stationary convection-diffusion problems

Abstract: This work is concerned with the derivation of a robust a posteriori error estimator for a discontinuous Galerkin method discretisation of linear non-stationary convection-diffusion initial/boundary value problems and with the implementation of a corresponding adaptive algorithm. More specifically, we derive a posteriori bounds for the error in the $L^2(H^1)$-type norm for an interior penalty discontinuous Galerkin (dG) discretisation in space and a backward Euler discretisation in time. An important feature of the estimator is robustness with respect to the P\'{e}clet number of the problem which is verified in practice by a series of numerical experiments. Finally, an adaptive algorithm is proposed utilising the error estimator. Optimal rate of convergence of the adaptive algorithm is observed in a number of test problems.