A multigrid preconditioner and automatic differentiation for non-equilibrium radiation diffusion problems

Abstract

We study the efficient solution of non-equilibrium radiation diffusion problems. An implicit time discretization leads to the solution of systems of non-linear equations which couple radiation energy and material temperature. We consider the implicit Euler method, the mid-point scheme, the two-step backward differentiation formula, and a two-stage implicit Runge–Kutta method for time discretization. We employ a Newton–Krylov method in the solution of arising non-linear problems. We describe the computation of the Jacobian matrix for Newton’s method using automatic differentiation based on the operator overloading in Fortran 90. For GMRES iterations, we propose a simple multigrid preconditioner applied directly to the coupled linearized problems. We demonstrate the efficiency and scalability of the proposed solution procedure by solving one-dimensional and two-dimensional model problems.