ABSTRACT
There are several distinctly different methods for obtaining numerical solutions to systems of partial differential equations. The three primary categories we consider here are finite difference methods, finite element methods, and spectral methods. Of course, within each of these three categories are many variations, not all of which we will be able to develop. Finite volume methods are basically finite difference methods applied to the conservation form of the equations, and are discussed somewhat in Section 2.6. We begin this chapter by discussing finite difference equations. There are several good references for this introductory material [22, 23, 24, 25].
