Robust A Posteriori Error Estimates for Stabilized Finite Element Methods

Abstract: There is a wide range of stabilized finite element methods for stationary and non-stationary convection-diffusion equations such as streamline diffusion methods, local projection schemes, subgrid-scale techniques, and continuous interior penalty methods to name only a few. We show that all these schemes give rise to the same robust a posteriori error estimates, i.e. the multiplicative constants in the upper and lower bounds for the error are independent of the size of the convection or reaction relative to the diffusion. Thus, the same error indicator can be used modulo higher order terms caused by data approximation.