A Geometric Multigrid Preconditioner for Shifted Boundary Method

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Authors: Michał Wichrowski, Ajith, Ajay
Cited by: 0

Abstract

The Shifted Boundary Method (SBM) trades some part of the burden of body-fitted meshing for increased algebraic complexity. While the resulting linear systems retain the standard $\mathcal{O}(h^{-2})$ conditioning of second-order operators, the non-symmetry and non-local boundary coupling render them resistant to standard Algebraic Multigrid (AMG) and simple smoothers for high-order discretisations. We present a geometric multigrid preconditioner that effectively tames these systems. At its core lies the \emph{Full-Residual Shy Patch} smoother: a subspace correction strategy that filters out some patches while capturing the full physics of the shifted boundary. Unlike previous cell-wise approaches that falter at high polynomial degrees, our method delivers convergence with low mesh dependence. We demonstrate performance for Continuous Galerkin approximations, maintaining low and stable iteration counts up to polynomial degree $p=3$ in 3D, proving that SBM can be both geometrically flexible and algebraically efficient.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Advanced Numerical Methods in Computational Mathematics Matrix Theory and Algorithms Computational Fluid Dynamics and Aerodynamics

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
15 January 2026
Document type
Preprint