ABSTRACT
With the development of high-speed computers, numerical techniques have been developed and extended to handle almost any problem of any degree of complexity. Of the numerical methods available, the finite-difference method is the most frequently used one. The essence of the finite-difference method consists of replacing the pertinent differential equation and boundary conditions by a set of algebraic equations. The finite-element method is another numerical method of solution. This relatively new method is not as straightforward, conceptually, as the finite-difference method, but it has several advantages over the finite-difference method in solving conduction problems, particularly for problems with complex geometries. In replacing a differential equation or a boundary condition by a set of algebraic equations, the fundamental operation is to approximate the derivatives by finite differences. The finite-difference formulation of a heat conduction problem will be complete if the boundary conditions are also written in finite-difference form.
