RMCP: Relaxed Mixed Constraint Preconditioners for saddle point linear systems arising in geomechanics

A major computational issue in the Finite Element (FE) integration of coupled consolidation equations is the repeated solution in time of the resulting discretized indefinite system. Because of ill-conditioning, the iterative solution, which is recommended in large size 3D settings, requires the computation of a suitable preconditioner to guarantee convergence. In this paper the coupled system is solved by a Krylov subspace method preconditioned by a Relaxed Mixed Constraint Preconditioner (RMCP) which is a generalization based on a parameter ω of the Mixed Constraint Preconditioner (MCP) developed in [7]. Choice of optimal ω is driven by the spectral distribution of suitable symmetric positive definite (SPD) matrices. Numerical tests performed on realistic 3D problems reveal that RMCP accelerates Krylov subspace solvers by a factor up to three with respect to MCP