Preconditioner updates applied to CFD model problems

Abstract

This paper deals with solving sequences of nonsymmetric linear systems with a block structure arising from compressible flow problems. The systems are solved by a preconditioned iterative method. We attempt to improve the overall solution process by sharing a part of the computational effort throughout the sequence. Our approach is fully algebraic and it is based on updating preconditioners by a block triangular update. A particular update is computed in a black-box fashion from the known preconditioner of some of the previous matrices, and from the difference of involved matrices. Results of our test compressible flow problems show, that the strategy speeds up the entire computation. The acceleration is particularly important in phases of instationary behavior where we saved about half of the computational time in the supersonic and moderate Mach number cases. In the low Mach number case the updated decompositions were similarly effective as the frozen preconditioners.