Adaptive mixed finite element method for Reissner–Mindlin plate Original Research Article

Mixed finite element methods are designed to overcome shear locking phenomena observed in the numerical treatment of Reissner–Mindlin plate models. Automatic adaptive mesh-refining algorithms are an important tool to improve the approximation behavior of the finite element discretization. In this paper, a reliable and robust residual-based a posteriori error estimate is derived, which evaluates a t-depending residual norm based on results in [D. Arnold, R. Falk, R. Winther, Math. Modell. Numer. Anal. 31 (1997) 517–557]. The localized error indicators suggest an adaptive algorithm for automatic mesh refinement. Numerical examples prove that the new scheme is efficient.