High order Finite Element Methods with Multiple Level

Hanging Nodes
Xianliang Hu, Danfu Han, Jiang Zhuk
September 28, 2009

Abstract
In this paper, we construct a set of high order finite element spaces on triangular
mesh allowing multiple level hanging nodes. The precise conforming conditions are
formulated to describe the constrains on these hanging nodes. The structure of these
conditions are found to be highly related with the configuration of the hanging nodes
when multiple level hanging nodes are allowed, then a special matrix modification
method is designed to solve the generated constrained finite element equations efficiently. Numerical examples are presented to validate the accuracy and efficiency of
the proposed finite element method.

Keywords: B-form; high order; finite element method;hanging nodes; multiple level;
matrix modification method;

Introduction

High order finite element method, especially the second and third order, are preferred in
many practical use, such as mentioned in [4, 5, 14, 15], etc. It is widely accepted that
the low order approximation is stable and efficient in practical computing, and high order
polynomials yield more accurate approximations. The second and third order finite element methods take the both advantages and show good balance in efficiency and accuracy.
In this sense, we referred in this paper the second and third order schemes as the high
order finite element methods.
In practice, automatic mesh refinement(AMR) is a constantly used strategy to get a
satisfactory result, which is known as h-version finite element methods. A lot of contributions can be found on this subject. It is also a general idea that the allowance of
hanging nodes can reduce the number of elements, more important, the mesh refinement
procedure becomes less complicated without paying special attention to keep the mesh
regular. Many works have been done to cooperate hanging nodes with hp finite elements

This work was partially supported by the National Basic Research Program under the Grant
2005CB32170X.

Email:xlhu@zju.edu.cn

Email:mhdf2@zju.edu.cn

Deptartment of Mathematics,Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, Zhejiang,P.R.China.

Email:jiang@lncc.br
k
Laborat
orio National de Comptutaca
o Cientfica, MCT, Avenida Get
ulio Vargas 333, 25651 075
Petr
opolis, RJ, , Brazil

on quadrilateral[2] and triangular meshes[3, 12]. The key point is to formulate the constrains on the hanging nodes in order to construct a continuous finite element space,
which is usually referred as conforming constrains/conditions. Such constrains are relatively easy to get in linear finite element method and have been widely used in practical
implementations.
In this paper, the conforming constrains with hanging nodes for high order finite
element methods are considered. To the best of our knowledge, few related work has
addressed such issues. Using triangular B-form as high order shape functions, the conforming constrains are formulated conveniently. Furthermore, it can be treated efficiently
in numeric through matrix modification method, which turns the constrained linear finite
element equations into a positive defined system. On the other hand, the element-byelement assembling procedure applied here is as simple as linear finite element method,
despite of the existence of multiple level hanging nodes.
The rest of the current paper is organized as following. In the next section, the conforming conditions with hanging nodes are formulated. Section 3 describes a special designed matrix modification method, which can treat the conforming constrains efficiently
for linear problem. The numerical efficiency on elliptic boundary value problems is illustrated in the last section, it shows that the proposed high order finite element methods
are successful.

Conforming finite element spaces with multiple level hanging nodes

In this section, we shall describe our scheme in constructing high order conforming finite
element spaces with hanging nodes. We prefer using Bernstein polynomials as shape functions. The Bernstein techniques have been used to design finite element space in several
researches, such as [9, 10] etc. The main reason here is the corresponding conforming
constrains are fairly easy to formulate especially on triangles.
Let us first introduce some basic notations. On any fixed triangle T :=< V1 , V2 , V3 >,
the triple (1 , 2 , 3 ) denotes the barycentric coordinates of some point (x, y) relative to
T . Then any polynomial with degree d on T can be represented in the so-called B-form
X
d
p(x, y) =
ci,j,k Bi,j,k
(x, y),
(1)
i+j+k=d
d!
d (x, y) =
i j k
where ci,j,k are called B-coefficients of p and Bi,j,k
i!j!k! 1 2 3 are triangular
Bernstein polynomials. According to their feet (i, j, k), they are both associated with a
set of domain points defined as

Dd,T := {ijk =

iv1 + jv2 + kv3

}i+j+k=d ,
d

(2)

For convenience, we would like to write the B-coefficients into the vector form c = (ci,j,k , i+
j +k = d), whose elements are sorted with respect to their feet in the lexicographical order.
For example, the index of c for d = 3 should be look like
(c3,0,0 , c2,1,0 , c2,0,1 , c1,2,0 , c1,1,1 , c1,0,2 , c0,3,0 , c0,2,1 , c0,1,2 , c0,0,3 )T .
In the context of AMR, the mesh refinement is usually achieved by so-called redgreen refinement strategy. The red step splits the elements where the error of the
2

approximated solutions are larger than the prescribed criteria, and the green step eliminates the hanging nodes generated by the previous step. Obviously, the green step yield
extra elements and they are unnecessary in some sense. If hanging nodes are allowed, the
green step can be avoided in generating unnecessary elements, that leads to irregular
meshes. For convenience, let us introduce here the concept of irregularity rules, which is
associated with the definition of multiple level hanging nodes:
Definition Let 4 be a triangulation. We say an edge e is regular(0-irregular) if e is the
unique common edge of two triangles in the mesh. Meanwhile, the corresponding start
and end points of the edge are called 0 level (hanging) nodes. Recurrently, if any node v
is the middle point of some k-irregular(k 0) edge, then v is called k + 1 level hanging
node and two sub-edges divided by v are (k + 1)-irregular edges. If n is the maximum
level of all nodes in 4, then we say that 4 satisfy n-irregularity rule.
As an illustration, we plot two irregular meshes with different level of hanging nodes
in Fig.1 where AB is 0-irregular edge and node A and B are 0 level nodes, while node

B
K2
K4

A
C
K3

C1

K1

C3
A

C7

C2

C6

Figure 1: examples of irregular meshes:

rule(right)

1-irregularity rule(left) and 3-irregularity

C is 1 level hanging node and AC as well as BC is 1-irregular edge. Most finite element
implementations allow 1-irregularity rule. In our implementation, k-irregularity rules(k
level hanging nodes,k = 0, 1, 2, ) are allowed.
For the sake of keeping shape regularity of triangular mesh, the 1-to-4 split scheme
is preferred as shown in Fig.1. To get an conforming(continuous) finite element space,
it is necessary to discuss the continuity constrains across interfaces of any two adjacent
triangles. Such constrains have been original proposed in the case of regular triangulation
in [6]. To treat the case with hanging nodes, we should extend such continuity conditions
here, which is also referred as hanging nodes constrains in finite element terminolodge.
We accomplish such extension in two steps: first for the 1 level hanging node case and
second for the multiple level hanging node cases.
Following the symbols in the left plot of Fig.1, we first consider the 1 level hanging
node constrains at the point C, which is just the continuity condition across the interface
AB.
To display the domain points clearly, the irregular interface AB is split virtually as plotted
in Fig.2, which shows the interface in more details. Apparantly, it is sufficient to consider
3

A [0]
(A)

(0)

[1]
(1)

(2)

[2]
C

(3) (3)

[3] B

(2)

(1)

(0)

(B)

K3

K2

Figure 2: Interface between element K1 ,K2 and K3

the continuity constrains on the common interface, where the Bernstein basis decrease to
one dimensional form
d!
Bid (s) =
si (1 s)(di)
(3)
i!(d i)!
In this case, we introduce the local coordinate s [0, 1] relative to K1 and l, r [0, 1]
corresponding to K2 and K3 respectively. Immediately, we have
l = 2s

(4)

and r = 2s 1 correspondingly. Let a approximation u is represent in piecewise Bforms, then the B-coefficients corresponding to element K1 on edge AB are denoted by
AB AB and cAB . Since the B-coefficients are graphically associated with domain
cAB
0 ,c1 ,c2
3
points, we regard that cAB
cAB
are sorted from the start node to the end node of edge
0
3
AB as is marked in Fig.2. Then any B-form limited on edge AB can be represent as
3
AB 3
AB 3
AB 3
uAB (s) = cAB
0 B0 (s) + c1 B1 (s) + c2 B2 (s) + c3 B3 (s)

(5)

By the way, we remark here that all the B-coefficients associated with any edge are sorted
from its start node to end node. The rule to distinguish the start and the end node of an
edge is based on the level of node irregularity, that is, the irregular level of the start node
is smaller than that of the end node, and the initial regular mesh can be done manually.
AC AC and cAC as the B-coefficients of the B-form correspondSimilarly, denote cAC
0 ,c1 ,c2
3
ing to element K2 on edge AC. Then the B-form limited on edge AC is uAC (l), which
satisfy
3
AC 3
AC 3
AC 3
uAC (l) = cAC
(6)
0 B0 (l) + c1 B1 (l) + c2 B2 (l) + c3 B3 (l)
The necessary and sufficient condition for u being continuous across the edge AC is
uAB (s) = uAC (l)

(7)

After simple algebraic manipulations, the linear system (4)(7) yield the ultimate relationship of B-coefficients at the both sides
AC
AB
1 0 0 0
c0
c0
1
1
AB

cAC

0
0
1 = 21 21 1
c1 .
(8)
AC

c2
cAB
2
4
2
4 0
1
3
3
1
cAC
cAB
3
3
8
8
8
8
AB AB AB T
AC = [cAC , cAC , cAC , cAC ]T , (8) can
If further denote CAB = [cAB
0 , c1 , c2 , c3 ] and C
0
1
2
3
AC
AB
be written into C
= LC
with proper definition of matrix L. A similar result can be

BC BC BC T
BC = RCAB with symmetric definition
gotton if CBC = [cBC
0 , c1 , c2 , c3 ] , which is C
of matrix R.
Now, we have formulate the conforming conditions across interface with 1 level hanging
node. It is rather efficient because the matrices L and R are usually computed a priori
and only one matrix need to be stored. The matrices for lower degrees are sub-matrix of
higher degrees and L is mirror symmetric with R. The commonly used high order lagrange
finite elements do not have such property. The hierarchical polynomials share the same
properties, however, they are preferred in p/hp version. We give the matrices L and R of
degree 5 below as examples.

0 0 0 0 0 1
1 0 0 0 0 0
1
1
0 0 0 0 1
1
0 0 0 0
2
2
2

21
1
1
1
1
1

0 0 0
0 0 0 4
4
2
4
2
4 .

,
R
=
(9)
L= 1
3
3
1
1
3
3
1
0 0
0 0
8

8
8
8
8
8
8
8
1
3
1
1
1
3
1
1
0 1
1
0
16
1
32

4
5
32

8
5
16

4
5
16

16
5
32

1
32

1
32

16
5
32

4
5
16

8
5
16

4
5
32

16
1
32

As we have seen, L and R can be stored in the same matrix in implementation since
they are mirror symmetric. A theorem shall be more efficient here to conclude the above
arguments:
Theorem 2.1 Let AB be an interface with 1 level hanging node between the adjacent
elements K1 , K2 and K3 . Edge AC and edge BC are subdivided form AB by the handing
node C. u is represented in piecewise B-forms. CAB , CAC and CBC are the corresponding
B-coefficient vectors of u limited on edge AB,AC and BC. Then u is continuous across
the interface AB if and only if
AC
C
= LCAB ,
(10)
CBC = RCAB .
where the matrices L and R are as described as in (9).
The cases with multiple level hanging node are complicated. Consider a general mesh
as shown in the right of Fig.1. It is not difficult to find out that the multiple level constrains
include two categories. The first type is direct constrains, such constrains always happen
at the interface AB when k-irregularity rules(k > 1) are allowed. It include the constrains
of the B-coefficients on each active sub-edges of AB(here, for e.g.,AC1 , C1 C7 ,C7 C2 ,C2 B).
As we will see in the remainder of this section, this type of constrains can be formulated
by combining several one-level constrains. The second one is implicit constrains. The Bcoefficient corresponding to hanging nodes may further constrain the B-coefficients which
do not lie on the interface AB. For example, the B-coefficients on edge C1 C3 and C1 C5
are constrained by the B-coefficients associated with C1 . They are treated when solving
finite element system.
Now, let us take a closer look at the treatment of multiple level hanging nodes constrain
of first type. Fig.3 is an example of 2 level hanging node case. The main purpose is to
obtain the relations of the B-coefficients limited on interface between K1 and K4 (the same
between K1 and K5 , and the constrains between K1 and K2 are actually 1 level constrains).
The left plot in Fig.3 is the simplified interface AB of Fig.1 without considering hanging
node C7 , and the right one is corresponding virtually split scheme as well as in Fig.2.
For 2 level case, it is necessary to introduce a virtual edge BC1 (marked with dash
line) on which intermediate virtual B-coefficients noted as CBC1 is imposed. Similarly,
5

K1
K1
A

[0]

C1
K

C2
K4

[1]

[2]
<3>

<2>

[3]
<1>

<0>

C1
B
(0) (1) (2) (3)(3) (2) (1) (0)
C1
B
C
2
K5
K

K5

Figure 3: The original irregular interface(left) and virtually split of irregular interface for
multiple level constrains(right)
let CAB ,CC1 C2 and CBC2 be the B-coefficients limited on interface with respect to the
corresponding elements K1 ,K4 and K5 . By Theorem 2.1, it is trivial to verify that the
continuity constrains across edge C1 C2 and edge BC2 are
CC
C 1 2 = RCBC1 = RRCAB ,
(11)
CBC2 = LCBC1 = LRCAB .
It is remarkable that the occurrence of R and L depends on the index of B-coefficients
appearing at the both sides of the interface. There is a simple rule based on the observations of all equations in (10) and (11), that is, we select matrix L when the subscribers
of B-coefficients vectors at the both sides are the same in the first position , and select
matrix R for other cases.
Actually, the above case about 2 level irregularity demonstrates the basic combination
strategy to treat the arbitrary level irregularity case. Consequently, we formulate the
arbitrary level hanging node constrains between any fine edge EF and coarse edge AB as
the conclusion of this section by the following theorem.
Theorem 2.2 Let edge EF be an n-irregular edge which is subdivided from 0-irregular
edge AB, then there exists a sequence of edges {egi }ni=0 , which satisfy
EF := egn egn1 eg0 := AB.
Denote CEF and CAB as the B-coefficient vectors of function u associated with edge EF
and AB respectively, then u is continuous across the interface EF if and only if
n
!
Y
EF
C
=
Mi CAB
(12)
i=1

where

Mi =

L , if the start node of egi is the start node of egi1 ;

R , if the start node of egi is the end node of egi1 .

Solving the constrained finite element equations

We shall discuss in this section on how to numerical treat the conforming constrains in an
efficient way in the finite element contex. For simplicity, let us take the possion problem as
6

our validation model. For some triangulation 4 of the computation domain , let Vh (4)
to be our conforming finite element space satisfying the boundary condition uh | = gh ,
then we want to find a solution uh Vh (4), such that
ah (uh , vh ) = f (vh ),
where

vh Vh ,

Z
ah (uh , vh ) =
Z
f (vh ) =

uh vh d
hvh d.

By the standary finite element procedure, thenPwe get an finite element solution in
d , which satisfy the
B-form for above variational problem, namely u = i+j+k=d ci,j,k Bi,j,k
fllowing constrained finite element equations
ACbezier = b,
subject to

(system equations)

HCbezier = 0, (continuity constrains)

BCbezier = g. (boundary conditions)

(13)

(14)

where Cbezier is denoted as the global B-coefficients vector The sparse matrix A in (13)
is archived by standard element-by-element assembling procedure[4] with taking all Bcoefficients as degree of freedoms. It is known that the A is singular because not all the
B-coefficients are linear independent. As for the linear constrains in (14), the first one
is the global continuity constrain, which is also assembled from all local contributions as
(10) or (12) when running over all irregular interfaces. The second one is the discrete form
of dirichlet boundary conditions. It is standard from the solvability theory of conforming
finite element theory that the whole system (13)+(14) has an unique solution.
In literatures, the equaitons can be solved by various numerical techniques, including
augment lagrange method, penalty method, eliminate method and matrix modification
method. The augment lagrange method is suggested for current problems in [1], where
such method are viewed as spline method. it is further proved to be convergent in [13]
even for unsymmetric A. However, much larger linear system is processed than any other
method, so that it is not comparable cheap scheme for C 0 finite element spaces. The
second one is penalty method, it requires the careful selection of a parameter which may
lead to an inexact imposition of the constraints. At the same time, the penalty method
destroy the symmetric of original linear system. Eliminate method is the third choice, it
is exact but sometime not numerical cheap for large size systems. Matrix modification
method is preferred because of its exactness and relative simple to implement[11], which
is actually equal to the standard element-by-element assembling procedure if there is no
hanging node.
The global B-coefficients can be separated into two parts: the constraining type and
the constrained type. The former is the set of the smallest linear independent collection
in global B-coefficients. The constraining type has many possible combinations, and it is
a good choice to select the ones associated with MDS. Denoted it as CM DS . The later
includes all the B-coefficients except the constraining ones, and it can be decided through
global continuity constrains. We start from the continuity constrains in (14) with writing
it into
Cbezier = P CM DS
(15)
7

where P is an modification matrix generated from matrix H in (14). There are relations
between the selection of MDS and the construction of P and we shall discuss in the
next paragraph. We now complete introducing the matrix modification method for our
constrained linear system. The combination of (15) and (13) leads to:
(P T AP )CM DS = (P T b).

(16)

It is standard to solve (16) and boundary condition with

M DS = b.
We also refer it as AC
direct method or iterative method. Since it is a simple system in our case, we prefer the
direct method provided by matlab. As soon as we get CM DS , Cbezier is known by (15).
It is convenient to construct modification matrix P through the comcept of Minimal
Determining Set, which play an important role in multivariate spline analysis, and it can
also used to construct various finite element spaces (c.f.[7]). In fact, MDS is a subset of the

Figure 4: MDS(The red points) is accidently all domain points for spline space S30 (4)
whole domain points of a triangular mesh, exclude the ones constrained by the continuity
conditions of B-forms on two adjacent patches . More precisely, if the total number of Bcoefficients(domain points) for some spline spaces is m, and n B-coefficients among them
can be decided by the rest of them through the continuity condition, then there are m n
elements in MDS. It is also worth to point out that the MDS on a regular mesh for C0
finite element space(denoted as Sd0 (4) here) are accidently the union of all the domain
points. As displayed as in Fig.4. The investigation of this problem can be divided into
two related aspects: the selection of MDS on triangle mesh with hanging nodes for finite
element spaces Sd0 (4irregu ) and the construction of P from H. It is not difficult to pick
out the MDS for desired finite element spaces. Take the third order finite element space
as an example, the corresponding MDS can be selected as plotted in Fig.5. It is composed
of the following domain points:
the domain points associated with non-hanging nodes and boundary nodes (marked
with circles in Fig.5,
the domain points lie on regular interfaces and boundary edges(marked with plus),
the ones lie on the longest edge of irregular interfaces(marked with star). The Bcoefficients associated with its sub-edges are constrained by the ones associated with
it,
the ones defined in all the triangles(marked with triangle).
8

Figure 5: The MDS for C 0 conforming finite element spaces on triangle mesh with arbitrary
level haing nodes.

The global basis for the spline space is fixed as soon as we find the MDS for corresponding
mesh. This is the standard strategy to prove the existence of spline spaces. The interested
readers are suggested to refer [7] for more cases.
The remain task is to construct P . Before further investigation, let us pay attention
to the size of related matrices and vectors. Denote m as the length of Cbezier and n as
the length of CM DS , then the size of H must be (m n) m and P sized m n. P
is usually not easy to construct for arbitrary H. Fortunately, H has a special structure
in this article which makes the task a trivial matter, that is, there is one and only one
entry equals to 1 in each row of H and the B-coefficients corresponding to 1 must
be constrained. Additionally, other nonzero in H are all positive. These properties are
obvious when referring to the local continuity conditions (8). With the help of these two
special properties, we described the algorithm of constructing P from H as the conclusion
of this section:
1. Execute gauss eliminate in H based on the 1 in each row. The order is important
for convergence. The low-level constrains should be treated before the high-level
constrains. In such order, the number of 1 keep fixed during the whole procedure.
Then all the implicit constrains become into direct constrains.
2. Initialize P as an identity matrix sized m m. Add the eliminated H to P row by
row according to the index of the corresponding constrained B-coefficients in vector
Cbezier .
3. At last, drop out the columns of P whose entries are all zeros (there should be
exact m n such columns), then we get the desired P . Alternatively, this step is
unnecessary if we add the linear constrains back to (16) before solving the ultimate
finite element system.

Numerical Validations

In this section, we present a numerical example to show the performance of our scheme.
Consider a poisson equation 4u = f in a unit square domain [0, 1][0, 1] . Its right hand
side f and dirichlet boundary condition are selected according to the analytic solution:
1
1
u = arctan( (y 2 2x + )).

2
The parameter decide the width of internal layer, for e.g., when <= 0.05 , the solution
have a steep internal layer. Fig.6 shows the analytic solution for = 0.05. Being similar
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Figure 6: The analytic solution for = 0.05(left) and the initial mesh(right).
in [3], the approximation error is measured relatively as:
Erel =

||u uh ||H 1 ()
100%,
||u||H 1 ()

where uh is the finite element solution and u is the analytic solution. For practical problems, one can use a posteriori error estimator when the analytic solution is not avaiable,
which is a standard technique in adaptive strategy. Local mesh refinement is the basic way
to improve the approximation for better accuracy. We test for several different irregularity
rules and the resulted meshes for different cases are shown in Fig.7, also the history of
degree of freedoms versus relative errors are plotted in Fig.8 for both the second order and
the third order version.
The above numerical results illustrate information on two facets. It can be observed
that the computations on irregular mesh with hanging nodes cost much less than that on
regular mesh under the same criteria. We can get some clues from the adaptively refined
mesh and the cost of degree of freedoms. Both the number of generated triangle and
the costed degree of freedoms are cheaper when allowing hanging nodes. On the other
hand, multi-irregularity rules do not benefit much more than 1-irregularity rule. This may
because the tested analytic solutions are smooth despite of their steep layers, which yield
less presence of multiple-level hanging nodes. In the above case, only two place appear 2
level hanging nodes(marked with red circle in Fig.7), however, it in some sense explains
the reason why 1-irregular rule is more popular in practical.
We propose an series of workable high order finite element methods on triangle mesh
allowing multiple level hanging nodes. The performances of the second order and third
order versions are illustrated. The higher order versions can be used with only chaning
the order of polynomials although they are not preferred in many cases. The scheme
10

0.8

0.8

0.8

0.6

0.6

0.6

0.4

0.4

0.4

0.2

0.2

0.2

0.5

0.5

0.5

Figure 7: The resulted mesh for third order finite element method. From left to right are
for: regular rule, 1-irregularity and 2-irregularity rules respectively.
55

50
regular rule
1irregular rule
2irregulars

50
45

40

40

35

35

30

30

25

25

20

20

15

15

10

10

5
200

400

600

800

1000

1200

regular rule
1irregular rule
2irregulars

45

0
500

1400

600

700

800

900

1000

1100

1200

1300

1400

1500

Figure 8: The history of d.o.f. versus relative error. The left is for second order finite
element method and the right one is for the third order.
is proved to be effective and efficient, and also is easy to implement. In the continued
research,a more practical problem other than elliptic problems are being tested to show
the performance of our scheme. On the other hand, it is also an interesting topic to extend
the theorem 2.1 and 2.2 to the hp-version. For this purpose, the degree elevate algorithm
of Bernstein basis is necessary. Such work has been started in [16] in two dimensional
case.

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2006, 24-76.

11

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n, J. Cerven

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