An Adaptive Mesh-Refining Algorithm Allowing for an H1 Stable L2 Projection onto Courant Finite Element Spaces

Abstract Suppose $\cal{S}^1({\cal T})\subset H^1(\Omega)$ is the $P_1$-finite element space of $\cal{T}$-piecewise affine functions based on a regular triangulation $\cal{T}$ of a two-dimensional surface $\Omega$ into triangles. The $L^2$ projection $\Pi$ onto $\cal{S}^1(\cal{T})$ is $H^1$ stable if $\norm{\Pi v}{H^1(\Omega)}\le C\norm{v}{H^1(\Omega)}$ for all $v$ in the Sobolev space $H^1(\Omega)$ and if the bound $C$ does not depend on the mesh-size in $\cal{T}$ or on the dimension of $\cal{S}^1(\cal{T})$. \hskip 1em A red–green–blue refining adaptive algorithm is designed which refines a coarse mesh $\cal{T}_0$ successively such that each triangle is divided into one, two, three, or four subtriangles. This is the newest vertex bisection supplemented with possible red refinements based on a careful initialization. The resulting finite element space allows for an $H^1$ stable $L^2$ projection. The stability bound $C$ depends only on the coarse mesh $\cal{T}_0$ through the number of unknowns, the shapes of the triangles in $\cal{T}_0$, and possible Dirichlet boundary conditions. Our arguments also provide a discrete version $\norm{h_\cal{T}^{-1}\,\Pi v}{L^2(\Omega)}\le C\norm{h_\cal{T}^{-1}\,v}{L^2(\Omega)}$ in $L^2$ norms weighted with the mesh-size $h_\T$.