Robust and efficient solvers for coupled-adjoint linear systems are crucial
to successful aerostructural optimization. Monolithic and partitioned
strategies can be applied. The monolithic approach is expected to offer better
robustness and efficiency for strong fluid-structure interactions. However, it
requires a high implementation cost and convergence may depend on appropriate
scaling and initialization strategies. On the other hand, the modularity of the
partitioned method enables a straightforward implementation while its
convergence may require relaxation. In addition, a partitioned solver leads to
a higher number of iterations to get the same level of convergence as the
monolithic one.
The objective of this paper is to accelerate the fluid-structure
coupled-adjoint partitioned solver by considering techniques borrowed from
approximate invariant subspace recycling strategies adapted to sequences of
linear systems with varying right-hand sides. Indeed, in a partitioned
framework, the structural source term attached to the fluid block of equations
affects the right-hand side with the nice property of quickly converging to a
constant value. We also consider deflation of approximate eigenvectors in
conjunction with advanced inner-outer Krylov solvers for the fluid block
equations. We demonstrate the benefit of these techniques by computing the
coupled derivatives of an aeroelastic configuration of the ONERA-M6 fixed wing
in transonic flow. For this exercise the fluid grid was coupled to a structural
model specifically designed to exhibit a high flexibility. All computations are
performed using RANS flow modeling and a fully linearized one-equation
Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model. Numerical simulations show up to 39%
reduction in matrix-vector products for GCRO-DR and up to 19% for the nested
FGCRO-DR solver.Comment: 42 pages, 21 figure