A cancellation free algorithm, with factoring capabilities, for the efficient solution of large sparse sets of equations

Abstract

Symbolic solutions of large sparse systems of linear equations, such as those encountered in several engineering disciplines (electrical engineering, biology, chemical engineering etc.) are often very lengthy, and received for this reason only occasional attention. This places the designer of a new and probably more successful symbolic solution method for the hard problem to find a representation which is suitable in the corresponding engineering areas, while still being neat and compact. It is believed that this problem has been solved to a great deal with the introduction of the new Factoring Recursive Minor Expansion algorithm with Memo, FDSLEM, presented in this paper. The FDSLEM algorithm has important properties which make the implementation of an algorithm which can generate the approximate solution of a perturbed system of equations relatively straight forward. The algorithms given can operate on arbitrary sparse matrices, but one obtains optimal profit of the properties of the algorithm if the matrices have a certain fundamental form, as is illustrated in the paper.