Localized Jacobian ILU preconditioners for hydraulic fractures

We discuss the properties of a class of sparse localized approximations to the Jacobian operator that arises in modelling the evolution of a hydraulically driven fracture in a multi-layered elastic medium. The governing equations involve a highly non-linear coupled system of integro-partial differential equations along with the fracture front free boundary problem. We demonstrate that an incomplete LU factorization of these localized Jacobians yields an efficient preconditioner for the fully populated, stiff, non-symmetric system of algebraic equations that need to be solved multiple times for every Growth increment of the fracture. The performance characteristics of this class of preconditioners is explored via spectral analysis and numerical experiment. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.