Jacobian-Free Newton-Krylov Implicit Solver

Research Group: S. Trigueiro, D. Lee (UCSC)

We introduce a fully implicit solver based on a Jacobian-Free Newton-Krylov (JFNK) approach with an appropriate preconditioner. The main goal of developing this JFNK-type implicit solver is to provide efficient high-order numerical algorithms and methodology for simulating stiff systems of differential equations on large-scale parallel computer architectures.

A large number of natural problems in nonlinear physics involve a wide range of spatial and time scales of interest. A system that encompasses such a wide magnitude of scales is described as “stiff”. A stiff system can arise in many different fields of physics, including fluid dynamics/aerodynamics, laboratory/space plasma physics, low Mach number flows, reactive flows, radiation hydrodynamics, and geophysical flows. One of the big challenges in solving such a stiff system using current-day computational resources lies in resolving time and length scales varying by several orders of magnitude.