A scalable dual-primal domain decomposition method

We blend dual and primal domain decomposition approaches to construct a fas t iterative method for the solution of large-scale systems of equations ari sing from the finite element discretization of second- and fourth-order par tial differential equations. We show numerically that our method is scalabl e with respect to the mesh size, the subdomain size, and the number of elem ents per subdomain. We apply it to the solution of several realistic struct ural mechanics problems, and report on parallel performance results obtaine d on an Origin 2000 system, as well as the ASCI Option Red supercomputer. C opyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.