An Accelerated Block-Parallel Newton Method via Overlapped Partitioning

This paper presents an overlapped block-parallel Newton method for solving large nonlinear systems. The graph partitioning algorithms are first used to partition the Jacobian into weakly coupled overlapping blocks. Then the simplified Newton iteration is directly performed, with the diagonal blocks and the overlapping solutions assembled in a weighted average way at each iteration. In the algorithmic implementation, an accelerated technique has been proposed to reduce the number of iterations. The conditions under which the algorithm is locally and semi-locally convergent are studied. Numerical results from solving power flow equations are presented to support our study.