Determination of travel directions in path-following methods (Q1804918)

Determination of the correct travel directions in aspect of continuation methods is discussed. A new criterion used to determine the sign of the loading parameter increment in the predictor phase of the nonconsistent arc-length method has been proposed, which may avoid a misleading travel direction of the continuation method due to inappropriate initial guesses. The new criterion can be incorporated into both direct and iterative solvers, and has proved to be very successful for the test problems considered.