Date of Award

12-19-2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering (MSME)

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Drazen Fabris

Abstract

This work addresses the solution to a Dirichlet boundary value problem for the Poisson equation in 1-D, d2u/dx2 = f using a numerical Fourier collocation approach. The order of accuracy of this approach can be increased by modifying f so the periodic extension of the right hand side is suffciently smooth. A proof for the order is given by Sköllermo. This work introduces a subtraction technique to modify the function's right hand side to reduce the discontinuities or improve the smoothness of its periodic extension. This subtraction technique consists of cosine polynomials found by using boundary derivatives. We subtract cosine polynomials to match boundary values and derivatives of f. The derivatives need only be calculated numerically and approximately represent derivatives at the boundaries. Increasing the number of cosine polynomials in the subtraction technique increases the order of accuracy of the solution. The use of cosine polynomials matches well with the Fourier transform approach and is computationally efficient. Implementation of this technique results in a solution with variable accuracy depending on the number of collocation points and approximated boundary derivatives. Results show that the technique can be up to 14th order accurate.

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