Comparison of Some Finite Difference Methods for the Prediction of Heat Transfer Phenomena in a Porous, Heat Producing Medium

摘要

The testing of some advanced finite difference techniques for the prediction of natural convection in a porous, heat producing medium saturated by a liquid layer is discussed. This requires the solutions be of a set of nonlinear partial differential equations. Various step splitting methods are applied. Essentially, these are the 'alternate direction explicit and the alternate direction implicit methods. results are compared and discussed. It is shown that the explicit method is too slow for practical application, while alternate direction implicit techniques offer acceptable results. Thus, heat transfer phenomenology in packed beds is amenable to successful numerical study with reasonale machine times.