Robust Block Preconditioning for 3D nonlinear steady-state radiation transport equations

Abstract

In this work, based on the discrete ordinate method, we propose a robust block preconditioning strategy for the 3D nonlinear steady-state radiation transport equation with heat diffusion term. The presence of the diffusive term of the temperature equation prevents its elimination into a single equation for the radiation intensity. To overcome this difficulty, all physical variables are assembled into a single monolithic linear system. The heat flux and temperature are treated as independent variables in a mixed $H(\mathrm{div})$-conforming finite element formulation. The equation for radiation intensity is discretised by a discontinuous Galerkin method with upwind flux, where a vectorial finite element space is used to couples the radiation intensity in different directions within each element. We then construct a Newton-Krylov iterative solver to solve the nonlinear equations, for which the core part is efficient preconditioning. To accelerate the convergence of Krylov's method, three block preconditioners are constructed, corresponding to different levels of approximation of the coupling between the temperature and radiation intensity. $P_{\mathrm{Schur}}$ retains the full coupling. $P_{\mathrm{Split}}$ drops the conductive contribution to the radiation block. $P_{\mathrm{BJ}}$ neglects the radiation-to-temperature coupling, retaining only the temperature-to-radiation coupling. Numerical experiments demonstrate the mesh independence and robustness of the proposed preconditioners.