Abstract

The iterative solution of linear systems arising from panel method discretization of three‐dimensional (3D) exterior potential problems coming mainly from aero‐hydrodynamic engineering problems, is discussed. An original preconditioning based on an approximate eigenspace decomposition is proposed, which corrects bad conditioning arising from a pair of surfaces that are very close to each other, which is a very common situation in slender wings and other aerodynamic profiles. This preconditioning has been tested with the standard Bi‐conjugate gradient (Bi‐CG) and conjugate gradient squared (CGS) iterative methods.