Cross-Points in Domain Decomposition Methods with a Finite Element Discretization

Abstract: Non-overlapping domain decomposition methods necessarily have to exchange Dirichlet and Neumann traces at interfaces in order to be able to converge to the underlying mono-domain solution. Well known such non-overlapping methods are the Dirichlet-Neumann method, the FETI and Neumann-Neumann methods, and optimized Schwarz methods. For all these methods, cross-points in the domain decomposition configuration where more than two subdomains meet do not pose any problem at the continuous level, but care must be taken when the methods are discretized. We show in this paper two possible approaches for the consistent discretization of Neumann conditions at cross-points in a Finite Element setting.