Flux density and energy perturbations in adaptive finite element mesh generation

A simple, easy-to-use scheme for the adaptive refinement of finite element meshes is introduced. The changes in the flux densities and energy contributions of finite elements from iteration to iteration are monitored, and elements in which the changes are more than a preassigned percentage are selected for refinement. Working with first-order triangular elements, whenever a triangle has to be refined, each of the three edges of the triangle is cut into two by placing a node in the middle. This scheme presents a natural extension of the nodal perturbation scheme. It is shown that combining the three criteria results in more accuracy, and studiedly moving the location of a new node on an edge away from the middle reduces the computational cost.>