Numerical Methods for Engineers

A digital compendium

Johan Kolstø Sønstabø [1]
Leif Rune Hellevik [1]

[1] Department of Structural Engineering, NTNU

May 28, 2015

Table of contents

      Scientific computing with Python
Chapter 1: Initial value problems for Ordinary Differential Equations
      Introduction
      Taylor's method
      Reduction of Higher order Equations
            Example 1: Reduction of higher order systems
            Example 2: Sphere in free fall
      Python functions with vector arguments and modules
      How to make a Python-module and some useful programming features
      Differences
      Euler's method
            Example 3: Falling sphere with constant and varying drag
            Example 4: Numerical error as a function of \( \Delta t \)
      Heun's method
            Example 5: Newton's equation
            Example 6: Falling sphere with Heun's method
      Runge-Kutta of 4th order
            Example 7: Falling sphere using RK4
            Example 8: Particle motion in two dimensions
            Example 9: Numerical error as a function of \( \Delta t \) for ODE-schemes
Chapter 6: Convection problems and hyperbolic PDEs
      The advection equation
            Forward in time central in space discretization
            Example 10: Burgers equation
References

This digital compendium is based on the first chapter of the compendium Numeriske Beregninger by J.B. Aarseth. It's intended to be used in the course TKT4140 Numerical Methods with Computer Laboratory at NTNU.

The development of the technical solutions for this digital compendium results from collaborations with professor Hans Petter Langtangen at UiO (hpl@simula.no), who has developed Doconce for flexible typesetting, and associate professor Hallvard Trætteberg at IDI, NTNU (hal@idi.ntnu.no), who has developed the webpage-parser which identifies Python-code for integration in Eclipse IDEs (such as LiClipse). The latter part of the development has been funded by the project IKTiSU.

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