A pollution controlled hybrid interior error estimator for linear elastostatics

A hybrid error estimator using a priori interior region estimates in an a posteriori framework is presented for linear elastostatics problems in FEA. It is shown that local rates of convergence are augmented by this technique and global rates are not adversely affected. The effects of pollution for this estimator are explained and a pollution error estimator is derived using the concept of error loads. It is shown that pollution error estimation can improve the performance of both the conventional a posteriori and the hybrid techniques. A series of numerical results are presented which demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method over previously published interior error estimation techniques. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.