A posteriori error control for stationary coupled bulk-surface equations

Abstract

We consider a system of two coupled elliptic equations, one defined on a bulk domain and the other one on the boundary surface. Problems of this kind are relevant for applications in engineering, chemistry and in biology, e.g., biological signal transduction. For the a posteriori error control of the coupled system, a residual error estimator is derived which takes into account the approximation errors due to the finite element discretization in space as well as the polyhedral approximation of the surface. An adaptive refinement algorithm controls the overall error. Numerical experiments illustrate the performance of the a posteriori error estimator and the proposed adaptive algorithm with several benchmark examples.

a posteriori, error analysis, finite element method, coupled bulk-surface, adaptivity