Scott MacLachlan
and
Niall Madden.
Submitted for publication, August 2012;
Revised, May 2013.
Abstract
We consider the problem of solving linear systems of equations that
arise in the numerical solution of singularly perturbed ordinary and
partial differential equations of reaction-diffusion type. Standard
discretization techniques are not suitable for such problems and so
specially tailored methods are required, usually involving adapted or
fitted meshes that resolve important features such as boundary and/or
interior layers. In this study, we consider classical finite
difference schemes on the layer adapted meshes of Shishkin and
Bakhvalov. We show that standard direct solvers exhibit poor scaling
behaviour, with respect to the perturbation parameter, when solving
the resulting linear systems. We propose and prove optimality of a new
block-structured preconditioning approach that is robust for small
values of the perturbation parameter, and compares favourably with
standard robust multigrid preconditioners for these linear systems. We
also derive stopping criteria which ensure that the potential accuracy
of the layer-resolving meshes is achieved.