A Preconditioner for Substructuring Based on Constrained Energy Minimization

A preconditioner for substructuring based on constrained energy minimization concepts is presented. The preconditioner is applicable to both structured and unstructured meshes and offers a straightforward approach for the iterative solution of second- and fourth-order structural mechanics problems. The approach involves constraints associated with disjoint sets of nodes on substructure boundaries. These constraints provide the means for preconditioning at both the substructure and global levels. Numerical examples are presented that demonstrate the good performance of the method in terms of iterations, compute time, and condition numbers of the preconditioned equations.