Comparison of refinement criteria for structured adaptive mesh refinement

We have investigated and analyzed the grid convergence issues for an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code. We have found that the numerical results for the AMR grid may have a larger error than those for the unrefined uniform grid. After a detailed analysis, we have found that the numerical solution at the coarse–fine interface between different levels of the grid converges only in the first-order accuracy. Therefore, the error near the coarse–fine interface can quickly dominate the error in the other regions if the coarse–fine interface is active and not covered by the fine grid. We propose, implement, and compare several refinement criteria. Some of them can catch the large-error region near the coarse–fine interface and refine them with the fine grid.