Abstract

Several numerical methods and algorithms, for solving the mathematical model of a continuous casting process, are presented, and theoretically studied, in this work. The numerical algorithms can be divided in to three different groups: the Schwarz type overlapping methods, the nonoverlapping Splitting iterative methods, and the Predictor-Corrector type nonoverlapping methods. These algorithms are all so-called parallel algorithms i.e., they are highly suitable for parallel computers.

Multiplicative, additive Schwarz alternating method and two asynchronous domain decomposition methods, which appear to be a two-stage Schwarz alternating algorithms, are theoretically and numerically studied. Unique solvability of the fully implicit and semi-implicit finite difference schemes as well as monotone dependence of the solution on the right-hand side are proved. Geometric rate of convergence for the iterative methods is investigated.

Splitting iterative methods for the sum of maximal monotone and single-valued monotone operators in a finite-dimensional space are studied. Convergence, rate of convergence and optimal iterative parameters are derived. A two-stage iterative method with inner iterations is analyzed in the case when both operators are linear, self-adjoint and positive definite.

Several new finite-difference schemes for a nonlinear convection-diffusion problem are constructed and numerically studied. These schemes are constructed on the basis of non-overlapping domain decomposition and predictor-corrector approach. Different non-overlapping decompositions of a domain, with cross-points and angles, schemes with grid refinement in time in some subdomains, are used. All proposed algorithms are extensively numerically tested and are founded stable and accurate under natural assumptions for time and space grid steps.

The advantages and disadvantages of the numerical methods are clearly seen in the numerical examples. All of the algorithms presented are quite easy and straight forward, from an implementation point of view. The speedups show that splitting iterative method can be parallelized better than multiplicative or additive Schwarz alternating method.

The numerical examples show that the multidecomposition method is a very effective numerical method for solving the continuous casting problem. The idea of dividing the subdomains to smaller subdomains seems to be very beneficial and profitable. The advantages of multidecomposition methods over other methods is obvious. Multidecomposition methods are extremely quick, while being just as accurate as other methods. The numerical results for one processor seem to be very promising.