Numerical methods for solving hyperbolic and parabolic partial differential equations

The main object of this thesis is a study of the numerical 'solution of hyperbolic and parabolic partial differential equations. The introductory chapter deals with a general description and classification of partial differential equations. Some useful mathematical preliminaries and properties of matrices are outlined. Chapters Two and Three are concerned with a general survey of current numerical methods to solve these equations. By employing finite differences, the differential system is replaced by a large matrix system. Important concepts such as convergence, consistency, stability and accuracy are discussed with some detail. The group explicit (GE) methods as developed by Evans and Abdullah on parabolic equations are now applied to first and second order (wave equation) hyperbolic equations in Chapter 4. By coupling existing difference equations to approximate the given hyperbolic equations, new GE schemes are introduced. Their accuracies and truncation errors are studied and their stabilities established. Chapter 5 deals with the application of the GE techniques on some commonly occurring examples possessing variable coefficients such as the parabolic diffusion equations with cylindrical and spherical symmetry. A complicated stability analysis is also carried out to verify the stability, consistency and convergence of the proposed scheme. In Chapter 6 a new iterative alternating group explicit (AGE) method with the fractional splitting strategy is proposed to solve various linear and non-linear hyperbolic and parabolic problems in one dimension. The AGE algorithm with its PR (Peaceman Rachford) and DR (Douglas Rachford) variants is implemented on tridiagonal systems of difference schemes and proved to be stable. Its rate of convergence is governed by the acceleration parameter and with an optimum choice of this parameter, it is found that the accuracy of this method, in general, is better if not comparable to that of the GE class of problems as well as other existing schemes. The work on the AGE algorithm is extended to parabolic problems of two and three space dimensions in Chapter 7. A number of examples are treated and the DR variant is used because of consideration of stability requirement. The thesis ends with a summary and recommendations for future work.