An h–p adaptive spectral element method for Stokes flow Original Research Article

An h–p adaptive spectral element method for three-dimensional axisymmetric domains featuring an element residual a posteriori error indicator, equidistribution of the error amongst the elements in the initial mesh and simultaneous h and p refinements is presented. The mortar element method is used to efficiently handle the nonconforming decompositions that arise in the adaptive process. Results obtained by applying the adaptive strategy to Stokes flow for different orders of regularity of the righthand side function are compared with the results obtained using a uniform p refinement. The results obtained show the advantages of using the proposed strategy.