Graded Mesh Refinement and Error Estimates for Finite Element Solutions of Elliptic Boundary Value Problems in Non-smooth Domains

This paper is concerned with the effective numerical treatment of elliptic boundary value problems when the solutions contain singularities. The paper deals first with the theory of problems of this type in the context of weighted Sobolev spaces and covers problems in domains with conical vertices and non-intersecting edges, as well as polyhedral domains with Lipschitz boundaries. Finite element schemes on graded meshes for second-order problems in polygonal/polyhedral domains are then proposed for problems with the above singularities. These schemes exhibit optimal convergence rates with decreasing mesh size. Finally, we describe numerical experiments which demonstrate the efficiency of our technique in terms of ‘actual’ errors for specific (finite) mesh sizes in addition to the asymptotic rates of convergence.