Preconditioning Newton- Krylov Methods for Variably Saturated Flow

In this paper, we compare the effectiveness of three preconditioning strategies in simulations of variably saturated flow. Using Richards’ equation as our model, we solve the nonlinear system using a Newton-Krylov method. Since Krylov solvers can stagnate, resulting in slow convergence, we investigate different strategies of preconditioning the Jacobian system. Our work uses a multigrid method to solve the preconditioning systems, with three different approximations to the Jacobian matrix. One approximation lags the nonlinearities, the second results from discarding selected off-diagonal contributions, and the third matrix considered is the full Jacobian. Results indicate that although the Jacobian is more accurate, its usage as a preconditioning matrix should be limited, as it requires much more storage than the simpler approximations. Also, simply lagging the nonlinearities gives a preconditioning matrix that is almost as effective as the full Jacobian but much easier to compute.