ME5302 assignment 1

Question 1

(1) What is the difference between Euler equation and Navier-Stokes equation? Please
write these equations in vector form, then explain the application range of each equation.

(2) What is the difference of steady flow and unsteady flow? Please write the systems of
equations of steady flow and unsteady flow, respectively, for 2D incompressible inviscid
flow in Cartesian coordinates (the number of unknown equals to the number of
equations).

(3) What is the role of boundary conditions in the numerical calculation? What is the role
of initial conditions in the numerical calculation?

(4) Please explain what is the “well-posed problem?”

Question 2

Consider the following one-dimensional diffusion equation

u  2u
  2 , 0  x  1.
t x
with periodic boundary condition, where is a constant. Apply the central difference
scheme to discretize the spatial derivative and show that the above partial differential
equation can be reduced to a coupled set of ordinary differential equations.

du 
 Au (1)
dt
 
Here u is a vector of unknowns, A is a matrix. You need to write out u and A explicitly.

Show that the equation (1) can be decoupled by the isolation theorem (3-steps theorem).

(Note that the Equation (1) is a coupled system for all the discretized grid points in the
ranges [0,1]. Isolation theorem is to make the system uncoupled. For each point, there is
an ODE, and every ODE is independent each other. Thus, we can solve each ODE for
each point from m=1, to m=M. After these independent ODEs are solved, we can
transform the solving variables back to the original ones.).

1
Question 3

Applying the three-point central difference scheme to approximate the spatial derivatives
of the Burger equation
u u  2u
c  2
t x x
where c,  are the constants, 0  x  1.

(1). Show that the partial differential equations (PDE) with Dirichlet boundary conditions
of u(0) = a, u(1) = b, can be reduced to a coupled set of ordinary differential equations
(ODE)

du 
 Au  Bc
dt

Here u is a vector of unknowns, A is a matrix, and Bc is a vector contributed from the
boundary conditions.

(2). Write out the matrix A and the vector Bc for the following boundary conditions
(i) periodic boundary condition;
(ii) u(0) = a, u(1) + 2ux(1) =b. (note that the left is Dirichlet boundary condition,
and the right is Neumann boundary condition).

Use a second order finite difference scheme to approximate the derivative in the
Neumann boundary condition.