A Time-Marching Algorithm for Solving Non-Linear Obstacle Problems with the Aid of an NCP-Function

Abstract

Proposed is a time-marching al- gorithm to solve a nonlinear system of com- plementarity equations: Pi(xj) ≥ 0, Qi(xj) ≥ 0, Pi(xj)Qi(xj )= 0, i, j = 1,...,n, resulting from a discretization of nonlinear obstacle problem. We transform the above nonlinear complemen- tarity problem (NCP) into a nonlinear algebraic equations (NAEs) system: Fi(xj )= 0 with the aid of the Fischer-Burmeister NCP-function. Such NAEs are semi-smooth,highlynonlinearand usu- ally implicit, being hard to handle by the Newton- like method. Instead of, a first-order system of ODEs is derived through a fictitious time equa- tion. The time-stepping equations are obtained by applying a numerical integration on the resul- tant ODEs, which are derivative-free and do not need the inverse of any matrix. The computa- tional cost is thus greatly reduced. The numerical examples of Bratu, von Karman and other elliptic equationsareusedto demonstratethatthenewfic- titious time integration method (FTIM) is highly efficient to calculate the obstacle problems. Keyword: Nonlinear Obstacle Problem, Non- linear complementarity problem, Nonlinear alge- braic equations, Iterative method, Elliptic equa- tions, Fictitious time integration method (FTIM)