Preconditioners for Incompressible Navier-Stokes Solvers

In this paper we give an overview of the present state of fast solvers for the solution of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations discretized by the finite element method and linearized by Newton or Picard＇s method. It is shown that block preconditioners form an excellent approach for the solution, however if the grids are not to fine preconditioning with a Saddle point ILU matrix （SILU） may be an attractive alternative. The applicability of all methods to stabilized elements is investigated. In case of the stand-alone Stokes equations special preconditioners increase the efficiency considerably.