An efficient method for constructing an ILU preconditioner for solving large sparse nonsymmetric linear systems by the GMRES method

AbstractThe main idea of this paper is in determination of the pattern of nonzero elements of the LU factors of a given matrix A. The idea is based on taking the powers of the Boolean matrix derived from A. This powers of a Boolean matrix strategy (PBS) is an efficient, effective, and inexpensive approach. Construction of an ILU preconditioner using PBS is described and used in solving large nonsymmetric sparse linear systems. Effectiveness of the proposed ILU preconditioner in solving large nonsymmetric sparse linear systems by the GMRES method is also shown. Numerical experiments are performed which show that it is possible to considerably reduce the number of GMRES iterations when the ILU preconditioner constructed here is used. In numerical examples, the influence of k, the dimension of the Krylov subspace, on the performance of the GMRES method using an ILU preconditioner is tested. For all the tests carried out, the best value for k is found to be 10