Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2004
In this paper we study a model problem describing the movement ofa glacier under Glen's flow law and investigated by Colinge andRappaz [Colinge and Rappaz, ESAIM: M2AN 33 (1999) 395–406]. We establish error estimates for finiteelement approximation using the results of Chow [Chow, SIAM J. Numer. Analysis 29 (1992) 769–780] andLiu and Barrett [Liu and Barrett, SIAM J. Numer. Analysis33 (1996) 98–106] and give an analysis of theconvergence of the successive approximations used in [Colinge and Rappaz, ESAIM: M2AN 33 (1999) 395–406].Supporting numerical convergence studies are carried out and wealso demonstrate the numerical performance of an aposteriori error estimator in adaptive mesh refinementcomputation of the problem.