Arc-Length Continuation and Multigrid Techniques for Nonlinear Elliptic Eigenvalue Problems

Abstract

We investigate multi-grid methods for solving linear systems arising from arc-length continuation techniques applied to nonlinear elliptic eigenvalue problems. We find that the usual multi-grid methods diverge in the neighborhood of singular points of the solution branches. As a result, the continuation method is unable to continue past a limit point in the Bratu problem. This divergence is analyzed and a modified multi-grid algorithm has been devised based on this analysis. In principle, this new multi-grid algorithm converges for elliptic systems, arbitrarily close to singularity and has been used successfully in conjunction with arc-length continuation procedures on the model problem. In the worst situation, both the storage and the computational work are only about a factor of two more than the unmodified multi-grid methods.