Block Incomplete LU-preconditioners for Implicit Solution

of Advection Dominated Problems

A. van der Ploeg

Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

R. Keppens

FOM-Institute for Plasma-Physics Rijnhuizen, The Netherlands

G. Tóth

Astronomical Institute, Utrecht Univ., Utrecht, The Netherlands

Proceedings of HPCN'97, Vienna, Austria
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 1225, 421-430

In many astrophysical hydrodynamical and magnetohydrodynamical problems explicit time integration is inefficient due to the disparate time scales, or because we are looking for a steady-state. Implicit schemes can offer a viable alternative, which requires efficient solution of large linear systems. In multi-dimensional flows these linear systems cannot be solved with a direct method, so that iterative methods must be used. Since the physical problems are often advection dominated, the matrix is approximately anti-symmetric and non-diagonally dominant, thus preconditioning is necessary. We describe a new approach, in which a GMRES type iterative method is combined with an Eisenstat implementation of a relaxed form of a modified Block Incomplete LU-decomposition as preconditioner. Parallelisation aspects of the algorithm are also discussed.