A Posteriori Error Estimation for Pressure-Robust Finite Element Methods Applied to the Stokes Optimal Control Problem

Abstract: This paper study a posteriori error estimates for the pressure-robust finite element method, which incorporates a divergence-free reconstruction operator, within the context of the distributed optimal control problem constrained by the Stokes equations. We develop an enhanced residual-based a posteriori error estimator that is independent of pressure and establish its global reliability and efficiency. The proposed a posteriori error estimator enables the separation of velocity and pressure errors in a posteriori error estimation, ensuring velocity-related estimates are free of pressure influence. Numerical experiments confirm our conclusions.