Abstract
The paper investigates computational efficiency of various finite element solvers, including the state-of-the-art iterative methods based on multigrid-like and Modified Incomplete Cholesky preconditioners, as well as sparse direct solver recently developed at NASA Langley. These methods are compared to the newly developed Finite Element Oriented Solver (FEOS), which combines the advantages of the iterative and direct solution techniques. Numerical tests are conducted for both well-conditioned three dimensional problems as well as poor-conditioned problems, such as thin shells. The proposed FEOS solver has been found to possess a remarkable robustness and computational efficiency, by far superior to its comprising ingredients.