Fast solvers for finite difference approximations for the stokes and navier-stokes equations

We consider several methods for solving the linear equations arising from finite difference discretizations of the Stokes equations. The two best methods, one presented here for the first time, apparently, and a second, presented by Bramble and Pasciak, are shown to have computational effort that grows slowly with the number of grid points. The methods work with second-order accurate discretizations. Computational results are shown for both the Stokes equations and incompressible Navier-Stokes equations at low Reynolds number.