General theory of interpolation error estimates on anisotropic meshes

Abstract

We propose a general theory of estimating interpolation error for smooth functions in two and three dimensions. In our theory, the error of interpolation is bound in terms of the diameter of a simplex and a geometric parameter. In the two-dimensional case, our geometric parameter is equivalent to the circumradius of a triangle. In the three-dimensional case, our geometric parameter also represents the flatness of a tetrahedron. Through the introduction of the geometric parameter, the error estimates newly obtained can be applied to cases that violate the maximum-angle condition.