Analysis of some projection method based preconditioners for models of incompressible flow

In this paper, several projection method based preconditioners for various incompressible flow models are studied. In the derivations of these projection method based preconditioners, we use three different types of the approximations of the inverse of the Schur complement, i.e., the exact inverse, the Cahouet–Chabard type approximation and the BFBt type approximation. We illuminate the connections and the distinctions between these projection method based preconditioners and those related preconditioners. For the preconditioners using the Cahouet–Chabard type approximation, we show that the eigenvalues of the preconditioned systems have uniform bounds independent of the parameters and most of them are equal to 1. The analysis is based on a detailed discussion of the commutator difference operator. Moreover, these results demonstrate the stability of the staggered grid discretization and reveal the effects of the boundary treatment. To further illustrate the effectiveness of these projection method based preconditioners, numerical experiments are given to compare their performances with those of the related preconditioners. Generalizations of the projection method based preconditioners to other saddle point problems are also discussed.