PRECONDITIONERS FOR THE PRESSURE-CORRECTION METHOD APPLIED TO THE UNSTEADY STOKES PROBLEM

In this paper, the unsteady Stokes problem is considered and also the pressure-correction method for the problem is described. At a fixed time level, we reduce the problem to two symmetric positive definite problems which depend on a time step parameter. Linear systems that arise from the problems are large, sparse, symmetric, positive definite and ill-conditioned as the time step tends to zero. Preconditioned problems based on an additive Schwarz method for solving the symmetric positive definite problems are derived and preconditioners are defined implicitly. It will be shown that the rate of convergence is independent of the mesh parameters as well as the time step size.