On the preconditioning of three-by-three block saddle point problems

Abstract: We establish a new iterative method for solving a class of large and sparse linear systems of equations with three-by-three block coefficient matrices having saddle point structure. Convergence properties of the proposed method are studied in details and its induced preconditioner is examined for accelerating the convergence speed of generalized minimal residual (GMRES) method. More precisely, we analyze the eigenvalue distribution of the preconditioned matrix. Numerical experiments are reported to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed preconditioner.