Formulation of a new error indicator for adaptive meshing with Hermite boundary elements Original Research Article

The main characteristic of Hermite elements is that they include both the nodal values and their tangential derivatives in the functional representation of the field variables. In the present work, this feature is exploited to obtain an inexpensive and reliable error indicator, based on the tangential derivatives of the field variables rather than the field variables themselves. This new error indicator is developed, together with an h-adaptive strategy, in the context of Laplaceʹs equation. The numerical implementation shows satisfactory and very promising results.