SUMMARYA superconvergent element patch based stress extraction strategy is proposed for general FE postprocessing and/or error estimation procedures in adaptive ®nite element analysis. Generalized weight functions are proposed for discrete least-square functionals, and a corrected conjoint polynomial ®tting procedure is presented to ensure accurate stress extraction from the element domain once the primary level stress parameters have been evaluated. A numerical example is presented to ®x the parameters of the weight functions. Several plane stress examples are solved using QUAD4 elements, and results are compared to those of the node patch based extraction method using the conventional conjoint polynomial method. It is shown that the proposed technique yields more accurate results with enhanced local convergence. Although the method may be applied to higher-order elements too, only QUAD4 elements are chosen for the present examples since the present secondary re®tting strategy assumes superconvergent points only to be at element centroids. #