Next two seminars “Modelling of materials – theory, model reduction and efficient numerical methods” will take place next Monday and Tuesday (June 10 and 11, 2019) in the room K6 on Monday from 9:00 till 10:30 and in the room K4 on Tuesday from 10:00 till 11:30. Two talks will be given by Patrick Farrell. Please see the details below.
Speaker: Patrick Farrell
Title: A Reynolds-robust preconditioner for the 3D stationary Navier–Stokes
Abstract: When approximating PDEs with the finite element method, large sparse linear systems must be solved. The ideal preconditioner yields convergence that is algorithmically optimal and parameter robust, i.e. the number of Krylov iterations required to solve the linear system to a given accuracy does not grow substantially as the mesh or problem parameters are changed. Achieving this for the stationary Navier-Stokes has proven challenging: LU factorisation is Reynolds-robust but scales poorly with degree of freedom count, while Schur complement approximations such as PCD and LSC degrade as the Reynolds number is increased. Building on the work of Schöberl, Olshanskii and Benzi, in this talk we present the first preconditioner for the Newton linearisation of the stationary Navier–Stokes equations in three dimensions that achieves both optimal complexity and Reynolds-robustness. The scheme combines a tailored finite element discretisation, augmented Lagrangian stabilisation, a custom prolongation operator involving local solves on coarse cells, and an additive patchwise relaxation on each level that captures the kernel of the divergence operator. We present 3D simulations with over one billion degrees of freedom with robust performance from Reynolds number 10 to 5000.
Title: Computing disconnected bifurcation diagrams of partial differential equations
Abstract: Computing the distinct solutions $u$ of an equation $f(u, \lambda) = 0$ as a parameter $\lambda \in \mathbb{R}$ is varied is a central task in applied mathematics and engineering. The solutions are captured in a bifurcation diagram, plotting (some functional of) $u$ as a function of $\lambda$. In this talk I will present a new algorithm, deflated continuation, for this task. Deflated continuation has three advantages. First, it is capable of computing disconnected bifurcation diagrams; previous algorithms only aimed to compute that part of the bifurcation diagram continuously connected to the initial data. Second, its implementation is extremely simple: it only requires a minor modification to an existing Newton-based solver. Third, it can scale to very large discretisations if a good preconditioner is available. Among other problems, we will apply this to a famous singularly perturbed ODE, Carrier’s problem. The computations reveal a striking and beautiful bifurcation diagram, with an infinite sequence of alternating pitchfork and fold bifurcations as the singular perturbation parameter tends to zero. The analysis yields a novel and complete taxonomy of the solutions to the problem. We will also apply it to discover previously unknown solutions to equations arising in liquid crystals and quantum mechanics.