Hybrid and Multiplicative Overlapping Schwarz Algorithms with Standard Coarse Spaces for Mixed Linear Elasticity and Stokes Problems

TL;DR

This paper develops hybrid and multiplicative overlapping Schwarz algorithms with standard coarse spaces for mixed finite element discretizations of nearly incompressible elasticity and Stokes problems, demonstrating their scalability and robustness.

Contribution

It introduces new overlapping Schwarz preconditioners for saddle point systems in elasticity and Stokes problems, with proven convergence and extensive numerical validation.

Findings

Preconditioners are scalable and quasi-optimal.

Algorithms are robust to material discontinuities.

Performance remains good beyond theoretical assumptions.

Abstract

The goal of this work is to construct and study hybrid and multiplicative two-level overlapping Schwarz algorithms with standard coarse spaces for the almost incompressible linear elasticity and Stokes systems, discretized by mixed finite and spectral element methods with discontinuous pressures. Two different approaches are considered to solve the resulting saddle point systems: a) a preconditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) method applied to the symmetric positive definite reformulation of the almost incompressible linear elasticity system obtained by eliminating the pressure unknowns; b) a GMRES method with indefinite overlapping Schwarz preconditioner applied directly to the saddle point formulation of both the elasticity and Stokes systems. Condition number estimates and convergence properties of the proposed hybrid and multiplicative overlapping Schwarz algorithms are proven for the positive definite reformulation of almost incompressible elasticity. These results are based on our previous study [8] where only additive Schwarz preconditioners were considered for almost incompressible elasticity. Extensive numerical experiments with both finite and spectral elements show that the proposed overlapping Schwarz preconditioners are scalable, quasi-optimal in the number of unknowns across individual subdomains and robust with respect to discontinuities of the material parameters across subdomains interfaces. The results indicate that the proposed preconditioners retain a good performance also when the quasi-monotonicity assumption, required by the available theory, does not hold.