Semianalytical and Numerical Method of Lines for Elliptic PDEs

1 Semianalytical and Numerical Method of Lines for Elliptic PDEs 

Steady state mass or heat transfer in solids and current distribution in electrochemical systems involve solving elliptic partial differential equations. The method of lines has not been used for elliptic partial differential equations to our knowledge. Schiesser and Silebi (1997)[1] added a time derivative to the steady state elliptic partial differential equation and applied finite differences in both x and y directions and then arrived at the steady state solution by waiting for the process to reach steady state. [2] When finite differences are applied only in the x direction, we arrive at a system of second order ordinary differential equations in y. Unfortunately, this is a coupled system of boundary value problems in y (boundary conditions defined at y = 0 and y = 1) and, hence, initial value problem solvers cannot be used to solve these boundary value problems directly. In this chapter, we introduce two methods to solve this system of boundary value problems. Both linear and nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations will be discussed in this chapter. We will present semianalytical solutions for linear elliptic partial differential equations and numerical solutions for nonlinear elliptic partial differential equations based on method of lines. 

2 Semianalytical Method for Elliptic PDEs in Rectangular Coordinates 

Steady state heat conduction or mass transfer in solids with constant physical properties (diffusion coefficient, thermal diffusivity, thermal conductivity, etc.) is usually represented by a linear elliptic partial differential equation. For linear parabolic partial differential equations, finite differences can be used to convert to any given partial differential equation to system of linear first order ordinary differential equations in time. In chapter 5.1, we showed how an exponential matrix method [3] [4] [5] could be used to integrate these simultaneous equations 

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