Abstract: Schwarz methods are an important type of domain decomposition methods. Using the Fourier transform, we derive error propagation matrices and their spectral radii of the classical Schwarz alternating method and the additive Schwarz method for the biharmonic equation in this paper. We prove the convergence of the Schwarz methods from a new point of view, and provide detailed information about the convergence speeds and their dependence on the overlapping size of subdomains. The obtained results are independent of any unknown constant and discretization method, showing that the Schwarz alternating method converges twice as quickly as the additive Schwarz method.

Key words: domain decomposition algorithm, Schwarz method, Fourier transform, biharmonic equation