Iterative methods for the solution of elliptic problems on regions partitioned into substructures. (English) Zbl 0615.65113

Bjørstad, Petter E.; Widlund, Olof B.

SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 23, 1097-1120 (1986).

Authors’ summary: Finite element problems can often naturally be divided into subproblems which correspond to subregions into which the region has been partitioned or from which it was originally assembled. A class of iterative methods is discussed in which these subproblems are solved by direct methods, while the interaction across the curves or surfaces which divide the region is handled by a conjugate gradient method. A mathematical framework for this work is provided by regularity theory for elliptic finite element problems and by block Gaussian elimination. A full development of the theory, which shows that certain of these methods are optimal, is given for Lagrangian finite element approximations of second order linear elliptic problems in the plane. Results from numerical experiments are also reported.

Reviewer: I.H.Mufti

MSC:

65N30	Finite element, Rayleigh-Ritz and Galerkin methods for boundary value problems involving PDEs
65F05	Direct numerical methods for linear systems and matrix inversion
65F10	Iterative numerical methods for linear systems
35J25	Boundary value problems for second-order elliptic equations

Keywords:

substructures; Cholesky triangular factorization; iterative methods; direct methods; conjugate gradient method; elliptic finite element problems; block Gaussian elimination; numerical experiments