A unified mesh refinement method with applications to porous media flow

A unified algorithm is presented for the refinement of finite element meshes consisting of tensor product Lagrange elements in any number of space dimensions. The method leads to repeatedly refined n-irregular grids with associated constraint equations. Through an object-oriented implementation existing solvers can be extended to handle mesh refinements without modifying the implementation of the finite element equations. Various versions of the refinement procedure are investigated in a porous media flow problem involving singularities around wells. A domain decomposition-type finite element method is also proposed based on the refinement technique. This method is applied to flow in heterogeneous porous media. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.