Adaptive mixed finite element method for Reissner-Mindlin plate

Mixed finite element methods are designed to overcome shear locking phenome na observed in the numerical treatment of Reissner-Mindlin plate models. Au tomatic adaptive mesh-refining algorithms are an important tool to improve the approximation behavior of the finite element discretization. In this pa per, a reliable and robust residual-based a posteriori error estimate is de rived, 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. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.