Local and pollution error estimation for finite element approximations of elliptic boundary value problems

This paper addresses the issue of local elementwise error estimation of finite element approximations of elliptic boundary value problems. The characterization of element error as local and pollution error component is presented and the relationship between energy norms of local errors and that predicted by means of a posteriori error estimators is investigated. In addition, techniques for calculating element indicators of local error, pollution error, and other error indicators are presented.