A METHOD FOR SMOOTHING DERIVATIVES OF MULTILINEAR FINITE ELEMENT FIELDS.

An improved method for calculating smooth derivatives of multilinear finite element fields is presented. The method is also applicable to finite difference schemes. A simple one-dimensional model problem is discussed analytically, and the new method shows superior behaviour compared to existing popular smoothing techniques. Two- and three-dimensional problems involving isoparametric elements are tested, and the results show improvements over tile widely used global least-squares method, with lumped mass matrix, especially at the boundaries and for non-uniform meshes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]