A closed‐form multigrid smoothing factor for an additive Vanka‐type smoother applied to the Poisson equation

Abstract

AbstractWe consider an additive Vanka‐type smoother for the Poisson equation discretized by the standard finite difference centered scheme. Using local Fourier analysis, we derive analytical formulas for the optimal smoothing factors for vertex‐wise and element‐wise Vanka smoothers. In one dimension the element‐wise Vanka smoother is equivalent to the scaled mass operator obtained from the linear finite element method and in two dimensions the element‐wise Vanka smoother is equivalent to the scaled mass operator discretized by bilinear finite element method plus a scaled identity operator. Based on these findings, the mass matrix obtained from finite element method can be used as a smoother for the Poisson equation, and the resulting mass‐based relaxation scheme yields small smoothing factors in one, two, and three dimensions, while avoiding the need to compute an inverse of a matrix. Our analysis may help better understand the smoothing properties of additive Vanka approaches and develop fast solvers for numerical solutions of other partial differential equations.