Efficient p-Multigrid Based Solvers for Isogeometric Analysis on Multipatch Geometries

Isogeometric Analysis can be considered as the natural extension of the Finite Element Method (FEM) to higher-order spline based discretizations simplifying the treatment of complex geometries with curved boundaries. Finding a solution of the resulting linear systems of equations efficiently remains, however, a challenging task. Recently, p-multigrid methods have been considered [18], in which a multigrid hierarchy is constructed based on different approximation orders p instead of mesh widths h as it would be the case in classical h-multigrid schemes [8]. The use of an Incomplete LU-factorization as a smoother within the p-multigrid method has shown to lead to convergence rates independent of both h and p for single patch geometries [19]. In this paper, the focus lies on the application of the aforementioned p-multigrid method on multipatch geometries having a C0-continuous coupling between the patches. The use of ILUT as a smoother within p-multigrid methods leads to convergence rates that are essentially independent of h and p, but depend mildly on the number of patches.