Incorporation of linear multipoint constraints in substructure based iterative solvers. Part 1: A numerically scalable algorithm

We consider the iterative solution by a class of substructuring methods of the large-scale systems of equations arising from the finite element discretization of structural models with an arbitrary set of linear multipoint constraints. We present a methodology for generalizing to such problems numerically scalable substructure based iterative solvers, without interfering with their formulations and their well-established local and global preconditioners. We apply this methodology to the FETI method. and show that the resulting algorithm is numerically scalable with respect to both the substructure and problem sizes. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.