A Two-Level Preconditioner Based on Dominant Components for Time-Dependent Multiscale High-Contrast Problem

Abstract

In this work, we develop a two-level overlapping preconditioner for time-dependent problems in high-contrast multiscale media. We present a coarse-space construction based on multiscale methods, with emphasis on the relaxed nonlocal multicontinuum (NLMC) method. The NLMC space can be separated into components representing the high-permeability regions and the low-permeability background. We show that the complete NLMC space effectively preconditions the heterogeneous stiffness operator, whereas the high-permeability component alone captures the contrast-dependent global modes. For suitable small time-step sizes, the mass matrix controls the low-permeability contribution and only the high-permeability component in NLMC space is required for the global coarse correction in the two-level preconditioner. For general time-step sizes, performance can be maintained by using the full NLMC space or augmenting the high-permeability component with a standard multiscale space. The proposed coarse-space construction lowers the computational cost while preserving robustness with respect to coefficient contrast and fine-scale resolution. To further improve efficiency, the multiscale basis functions can be constructed by iteratively solving the relaxed energy-minimizing formulation. We demonstrate the robustness, efficiency and scalability of the proposed method through several numerical experiments.