Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2005 (2005), Issue 1, Pages 61-74
doi:10.1155/MPE.2005.61

On the numerical solution of the one-dimensional convection-diffusion equation

Mehdi Dehghan

Department of Applied Mathematics, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran 15914, Iran

Received 20 March 2004; Revised 8 July 2004

Copyright © 2005 Mehdi Dehghan. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The numerical solution of convection-diffusion transport problems arises in many important applications in science and engineering. These problems occur in many applications such as in the transport of air and ground water pollutants, oil reservoir flow, in the modeling of semiconductors, and so forth. This paper describes several finite difference schemes for solving the one-dimensional convection-diffusion equation with constant coefficients. In this research the use of modified equivalent partial differential equation (MEPDE) as a means of estimating the order of accuracy of a given finite difference technique is emphasized. This approach can unify the deduction of arbitrary techniques for the numerical solution of convection-diffusion equation. It is also used to develop new methods of high accuracy. This approach allows simple comparison of the errors associated with the partial differential equation. Various difference approximations are derived for the one-dimensional constant coefficient convection-diffusion equation. The results of a numerical experiment are provided, to verify the efficiency of the designed new algorithms. The paper ends with a concluding remark.