A note on initial higher‐order convergence results for boundary element methods with approximated boundary conditions

We consider a variational problem associated with a pseudo‐differential operator of negative order 2 s < 0 with an additional approximation of the given linear form. Such an approximation may correspond to an interpolation of given boundary conditions for a partial differential equation. The asymptotic order of convergence of the related Galerkin solution can be reached for ν = μ +2 s , where ν and μ are the polynomial degrees of the trial functions used to approximate the solution and boundary conditions, respectively. The main result of this article is to prove that one can expect higher initial rates in the convergence behavior, even in the worst case of isoparametric approximations (ν = μ) when the error is measured in the Sobolev norm H τ (Γ) with τ ∈ [ s , 0]; i.e., this initial estimate is also valid in the energy norm ‖ · ‖   H   s (Γ) . This result is based on the relation between the approximation error of the Galerkin solution without this additional approximation and the additional approximation error itself. As an illustration of the technique, an application of a boundary element method for the Dirichlet problem of a second‐order elliptic partial differential operator is given. Numerical examples confirm the theoretical results for this case. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 16: 581–588, 2000.