Dealing with pressure: FEM solution strategies for the pressure in the time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations

This paper presents a survey of solution methods for calculating the pressure in the time‐dependent Navier–Stokes equations. The primary focus is on the treatment of the pressure‐Poisson equation deriving from index‐1 DAE formulations of the Navier–Stokes equations. Based on extensive operational experience with a variety of solution strategies, the combination of a stabilized pressure‐Poisson operator with an A‐conjugate projection and SSOR preconditioned conjugate gradient method has been found to yield the overall best performance relative to the resolve cost of a high performance direct solver. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.