↜ Back to index Introduction to Numerical Analysis 1

Lecture 9

In Lecture 9 we develop a numerical method for the heat equation, modeling the evolution of temperature in a solid body.

The heat equation

Let us think about a thin rod of length 1 positioned on the x-axis between 0 and 1. We suppose that the sides of the rod are kept at a constant temperature $$a$$ and $$b$$, and that the temperature of the rod at time $$t = 0$$ and point $$x ∈ [0,1]$$ is $$u_0(x)$$. We are interested on the temperature of the rod at point $$x ∈ [0,1]$$ at a later time $$t > 0$$, called $$u(x,t)$$.

It is useful to think about the temperature $$u$$ as a function of position $$x ∈ [0,1]$$ and time $$t ≥ 0$$. Then physical Fourier’s law implies that the function $$u$$ is a solution of the heat equation, a parabolic-type partial differential equation:

\left\{ \begin{aligned} u_t(x, t) &= u_{xx}(x, t), && 0 < x < 1, t > 0,\\ u(x, 0) &= u_0(x), && 0 < x < 1, \\ u(0, t) &= a, && 0 < t, \\ u(1, t) &= b, && 0 < t. \end{aligned} \right.

Here $$u_t$$ is the partial derivative of $$u$$ with respect to $$t$$, $$u_t = \frac{\partial u}{\partial t}$$ and $$u_{xx}$$ is the second partial derivative u with respect to $$x$$, $$u_{xx} = \frac{\partial^2 u}{\partial x^2}$$. We assume for simplicity that the heat conductivity is 1.

We need to prescribe:

• initial condition: $$u(x, 0) = u_0(x)$$, the value of the temperature at the initial time $$t = 0$$. Here $$u_0$$ is a given function.

• boundary condition: $$u(0, t) = a$$, $$u(1, t) = b$$, where $$a$$, $$b$$ are given constants, prescribe what the temperature $$u$$ is at the boundary of the domain $$(0, 1)$$. This is also called the Dirichlet boundary condition.

Example: Assume that $$a = b = 0$$ and $$u_0(x) = \sin(\pi x)$$. Then $$u(x,t) = \sin(\pi x) \exp(-\pi ^2t)$$ is a solution of the heat equation. We see that the solution becomes very close to 0 rather fast. This is an important feature of the heat equation. In fact, with general boundary data $$a$$, $$b$$, the solutions exponentially fast converges to the stationary solution, the function $$(1 - x)a + x b$$.

Numerical method: explicit finite difference method

In contrast to ordinary differential equations, we need to discretize derivatives both in time and in space. For the discretization of $$u_t$$, we use the same idea as for the Euler method: the Taylor series at $$t$$. Let $$\tau > 0$$ and write:

$u(x, t + \tau ) = u(x, t) + \tau u_t(x, t) + O(\tau^2),$ where $$O(\tau^2)$$ stands for higher order terms proportional to $$\tau^2$$.

We will therefore approximate

$u_t(x, t) \sim \frac{u(x, t + \tau ) - u(x, t)}\tau.$

For the second derivative in $$x$$, we will use a similar idea. Let $$h > 0$$ and express

\begin{aligned} u(x + h, t) &= u(x, t) + h u_x(x, t) + \frac{h^2}2 u_{xx}(x,t) + O(h^3),\\ u(x - h, t) &= u(x, t) - h u_x(x, t) + \frac{h^2}2 u_{xx}(x,t) + O(h^3). \end{aligned}

Note the opposite sign in front of the first derivative. By adding these two equalities and subtracting $$2 u(x,t)$$, we can approximate $$u_{xx}(x,t)$$ as

$u_{xx}(x,t) \sim \frac{u(x + h, t) - 2u(x, t) + u(x - h, t)}{h^2}.$

We now select an integer $$M ≥ 1$$ and subdivide the domain $$(0,1)$$ into $$M$$ intervals $$(x_k, x_{k+1})$$ of length $$h = 1 / M$$ for $$k = 1, ..., M$$. In particular, $$x_k = (k - 1) h$$, $$k = 1, ... M + 1$$.

Similarly, we choose time step $$\tau > 0$$ and introduce the discrete times $$t_i = i \tau$$ for $$i = 0, ...$$. Let $$u_{i, k}$$ denote the value of a numerical approximation of $$u(x_k, t_i)$$. From the formulas for the approximation of $$u_t$$ and $$u_{xx}$$ and the heat equation, we get the following numerical scheme

$\frac{u_{i+1, k} - u_{i, k}} \tau = \frac{u_{i, k + 1} - 2 u_{i, k} + u_{i, k - 1}}{h^2}, \qquad i = 0, ..., \quad k = 2, ..., M.$

The values $$u_{0, k}$$ are given by the initial data $$u_0(x_k)$$, and the values $$u_{i, 1}$$, $$u_{i, M + 1}$$ are given by the boundary data $$a$$ and $$b$$.

We can express $$u_{i+1, k}$$ in terms of $$u_{i, k - 1}$$, $$u_{i, k}$$ and $$u_{i, k + 1}$$. Therefore we can advance the solution from time $$t_i$$ to time $$t_{i + 1}$$. This gives us the explicit finite difference method

\left\{ \begin{aligned} u_{i+1, 1} &= a, && i = 0, \ldots,\\ u_{i+1, k} &= u_{i, k} + \frac\tau{h^2} (u_{i, k + 1} - 2 u_{i, k} + u_{i, k - 1}), && k = 2, \ldots, M, \ i = 0, \ldots,\\ u_{i+1, M +1} &= b, && i = 0, \ldots,\\ \end{aligned} \right.

with the initial data

\begin{aligned} u_{0, k} &= u_0(x_k), && k = 1, \ldots, M + 1. \end{aligned}

This method is illustrated in the following figure.

An example Fortran code for the case $$a = b = 0$$ and $$u_0(x) = \sin(\pi x)$$, $$M = 10$$ and $$\tau = h^2 / 2$$, is given in the file heat.f90.

Exercise: Run the code in heat.f90 and plot the result using gnuplot. To plot two dimensional data (space dimension and time dimension), we use splot instead of plot:

splot 'sol.dat'

splot stands for surface plot. To connect the data points with lines, add w l (with lines):

splot 'sol.dat' w l

Exercise: Solve the heat equation with the following data:

• $$u_0(x) = \sin(\pi x)$$, $$a = b = 0$$
• $$u_0(x) = \sin(\pi x) + \sin(3\pi x)$$, $$a = b = 0$$
• $$u_0(x) = x(1 - x) + x$$, $$a = 0$$, $$b = 1$$
• $$u_0(x) = \frac 12 - |x- \frac 12|$$, $$a = b = 0$$

Exercise: Solve the heat equation with the source $$f = 1$$, initial data $$u_0(x) = 0$$, boundary data $$a = b = 0$$. In this case $$u_t = u_{xx} + f$$ and the finite difference scheme is

$u_{i+1, k} = u_{i, k} + \frac\tau{h^2} (u_{i, k + 1} - 2 u_{i, k} + u_{i, k - 1}) + f(x_k, t_i).$

Stability of the explicit finite difference scheme

As in the Euler method for ordinary differential equations, the time step cannot be taken arbitrarily large. In fact, it must be chosen in relationship to the space discretization parameter $$h$$:

$\tau ≤ \frac{h^2}2$

See von Neumann stability analysis for details.

Therefore if we want to have a good space resolution of our method, $$h$$ small, the number of time steps that we need to take becomes quickly prohibitively large. In such a case we should use a better numerical method, for instance implicit methods; see lecture 10 for more details.

Exercise: Try to change tau = h * h / 2. to tau = h * h in heat.f90 and observe what happens to the numerical solution.

Neumann boundary condition

Now instead of prescribing the value of $$u$$ at $$x = 0$$ and $$x = 1$$, we prescribe the value of the derivative $$u_x = \frac{\partial u}{\partial x}$$:

\left\{ \begin{aligned} u_t(x, t) &= u_{xx}(x, t), && 0 < x < 1, t > 0,\\ u(x, 0) &= u_0(x), && 0 < x < 1, \\ u_x(0, t) &= a, && 0 < t, \\ u_x(1, t) &= b, && 0 < t. \end{aligned} \right.

This type of boundary condition is called the Neumann boundary condition. We prescribe the value of the derivatives $$u_x(0, t) = \frac{\partial u}{\partial x}(0, t)$$ and $$u_x(1, t) = \frac{\partial u}{\partial x}(1, t)$$ on the boundary of the domain, instead of the value of the solution as in the case of the Dirichlet boundary condition.

We have to modify the numerical method at the boundary since now the values $$u_{i, 1}$$ and $$u_{i, M + 1}$$ are unknown. We use the difference scheme as before:

$$$\label{diffscheme} u_{i+1, k} = u_{i, k} + \frac\tau{h^2} (u_{i, k + 1} - 2 u_{i, k} + u_{i, k - 1}).$$$

However, when $$k = 1$$, we need something in place of $$u_{i, 0}$$ since $$u_{i, 0}$$ is a value outside of the domain. We use the second order symmetric finite difference

$$$\label{2nd} u_x(x, t) = \frac{u(x + h, t) - u(x - h, t)}{2 h} + O(h^2).$$$

Therefore we can use the value of the derivative $$u_x$$ on the boundary to estimate the value of the solution outside of the domain. From $$\eqref{2nd}$$ we have $$u_{i, 0} \sim u_{i, 2} - 2 h a$$. Similarly, at $$x = 1$$ we use $$u_{i, M + 2} \sim u_{i, M} + 2 h b$$. After substituting this into $$\eqref{diffscheme}$$, we get for $$k = 1$$ and $$k = M + 1$$ the modified scheme

\begin{aligned} u_{i+1, 1} &= u_{i, 1} + \frac{2\tau}{h^2} ( u_{i, 2} - u_{i, 1} - h a),\\ u_{i+1, M + 1} &= u_{i, M + 1} + \frac{2\tau}{h^2} (u_{i, M} - u_{i, M + 1} + h b). \end{aligned}

See the following figure for an illustration.

Example: the heat equation with the Neumann boundary, with initial data $$u_0(x) = x (1 - x)$$ and boundary data $$a = 1$$, $$b = -1$$ has the exact solution $$u(x,t) = x (1 - x) - 2t$$.

Exercise: Implement the finite difference method for the heat equation with initial data $$u_0(x) = x (1 - x)$$ and Neumann boundary data $$u_x(0, t) = 1$$, $$u_x(1, t) = 1$$.

What is the exact solution?