Error control and adaptivity for heterogeneous multiscale approximations of nonlinear monotone problems

Henning P, Ohlberger M

Abstract

In this work we introduce and analyse a new adaptive Petrov-Galerkin heterogeneous multiscale finite element method (HMM) for monotone elliptic operators with rapid oscillations. In a general heterogeneous setting we prove convergence of the HMM approximations to the solution of a macroscopic limit equation. The major new contribution of this work is an a-posteriori error estimate for the L2-error between the HMM approximation and the solution of the macroscopic limit equation. The a posteriori error estimate is obtained in a general heterogeneous setting with scale separation without assuming periodicity or stochastic ergodicity. The applicability of the method and the usage of the a posteriori error estimate for adaptive local mesh refinement is demonstrated in numerical experiments. The experimental results underline the applicability of the a posteriori error estimate in non-periodic homogenization settings.