ACCURACY COMPARISON OF CONTROL-VOLUME AND BUBNOV-GALERKIN FINITE-ELEMENT METHODS FOR HEAT CONDUCTION PROBLEMS

Abstract

The two-dimensional heat conduction equation is solved by control-volume and Bubnov-Galerkin finite-element methods. The accuracy reached is estimated on the basis of five test problems for which exact analytical solutions are available. The comparison concerns the calculation of temperature distribution and the computation of nodal heat flow rates over external and internal boundaries. In the numerical solution, rectangular elements of different orders are used and the element integrals are evaluated in closed form, thus avoiding all the errors not connected directly with the discretization process.