Abstract The paper presents a grammar for anisotropic two-dimensional mesh adaptation in hp -adaptive Finite Element Method with rectangular elements. Expressing mesh transformations as grammar productions is useful for concurrency analysis thanks to exhibiting the partial causality order (Lamport relationship) between atomic operations. It occurs that a straightforward approach to modeling this process via grammar productions leads to potential deadlock in h -adaptation of the mesh. This fact is shown on a Petri net model of an exemplary adaptation. Therefore auxiliary productions are added to the grammar in order to ensure that any sequence of productions allowed by the grammar does not lead to a deadlock state. The fact that the enhanced grammar is deadlock-free is proven via a corresponding Petri net model. The proof has been performed by means of reachability graph construction and analysis. The paper is concluded with numerical simulations of magnetolluric measurements where the deadlock problem occurred.