Recovery based error estimation for plate problems

This paper deals with a posteriori error estimation for shear-deformable plates finite element analysis, based on a new superconvergent recovery procedure called Recovery by Compatibility in Patches. The basic idea of this procedure is to recover stress resultants by enforcing compatibility over patches of elements. Displacements computed by the finite element analysis are prescribed on the boundary of the patch, and improved stress resultants are computed by minimizing the complementary energy of such a sub-model. The resulting procedure is simple, efficient, numerically stable and does not need any knowledge of superconvergent points. Some numerical examples are given.