Error Control for the Mean Curvature Flow

Abstract

We study the equation describing the motion of a nonparametric surface according to its mean curvature flow. This is a nonuniformly parabolic equation that can be discretized in space via a finite element method. We conduct an aposteriori error analysis of the semidiscrete scheme and derive upper bounds to the error in terms of computable quantities called estimators. The reliability of the estimators is practically tested through numerical simulations.