A posteriori error analysis of a mixed virtual element method for a nonlinear Brinkman model of porous media flow

Abstract In this paper we present an a posteriori error analysis of a mixed-VEM discretization for a nonlinear Brinkman model of porous media flow, which has been proposed by the authors in a previous work. Therein, the system is formulated in terms of a pseudostress tensor and the velocity gradient, whereas the velocity and the pressure of the fluid are computed via postprocessing formulas. Furthermore, the well-posedness of the associated augmented formulation along with a priori error bounds for the discrete scheme also were established. We now propose reliable and efficient residual-based a posteriori error estimates for a computable approximation of the virtual solution associated to the aforementioned problem. The resulting error estimator is fully computable from the degrees of freedom of the solutions and applies on very general polygonal meshes. For the analysis we make use of a global inf–sup condition, Helmholtz decomposition, local approximation properties of interpolation operators and inverse inequalities together with localization arguments based on bubble functions. Finally, we provide some numerical results confirming the properties of our estimator and illustrating the good performance of the associated adaptive algorithm.