Adaptive Underrelaxation of Picard Iterations in Ground Water Models

This methods note examines the use of adaptive underrelaxation of Picard iterations to accelerate the solution convergence for nonlinear ground water flow problems. Ground water problems are nonlinear when drains, phreatophytes, stream aquifer, and similar features are simulated. Typically, simple Picard iterations are used to address such nonlinear problems. Nevertheless, the convergence rate can be slow, or convergence cannot be obtained. However, convergence often can be accelerated using Picard iterations with adaptive underrelaxation, and convergence often can be obtained where it otherwise would not occur.