Parallel adaptive subspace correction schemes with applications to elasticity

In this paper, we give a survey on the three main aspects of the efficient treatment of PDEs, i.e. adaptive discretization, multilevel solution and parallelization. We emphasize the abstract approach of subspace correction schemes and summarize its convergence theory. Then, we give the main features of each of the three distinct topics and treat the historical background and modern developments. Furthermore, we demonstrate how all three ingredients can be put together to give an adaptive and parallel multilevel approach for the solution of elliptic PDEs and especially of linear elasticity problems. We report on numerical experiments for the adaptive parallel multilevel solution of some test problems, namely the Poisson equation and Lame's equation. Here, we emphasize the parallel efficiency of the adaptive code even for simple test problems with little work to distribute, which is achieved through hash storage techniques and space-filling curves. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.