A new adaptive mesh refinement strategy based on a probabilistic error estimation

In this paper, an automatic adaptive mesh refinement procedure is presented for two-dimensional problems on the basis of a new probabilistic error estimator. First-order perturbation theory is employed to determine the lower and upper bounds of the structural displacements and stresses considering uncertainties in geometric sizes, material properties and loading conditions. A new probabilistic error estimator is proposed to reduce the mesh dependency of the responses dispersion. The suggested error estimator neglects the refinement at the critical points with stress concentration. Therefore, the proposed strategy is combined with the classic adaptive mesh refinement to achieve an optimal mesh refined properly in regions with either high gradients or high dispersion of the responses. Several numerical examples are illustrated to demonstrate the efficiency, accuracy and robustness of the proposed computational algorithm and the results are compared with the classic adaptive mesh refinement strategy described in the literature.