Partial Differential Equations TM/GU Computer Assignment 2b

For the computations in this assignment, you can use either FEMLAB or the PDE Toolbox. These programs both solve PDEs using the Finite Element Method, and are run in the MATLAB environment. The programs are available on your pde-xx account.

The PDE Toolbox is a somewhat simpler program than FEMLAB, but it should suffice for most of the selected Applications in this assignment. One weakness of the PDE Toolbox is that it lacks the capability of solving convection dominated problems. For these you will therefore need FEMLAB (here is an example problem you can study if you like), however, experimenting with the PDE Toolbox a little first, might still be a good preparation also for using FEMLAB.

There is on-line help available. In the FEMLAB GUI, you start "FEMLAB Help Desk" by pressing the ? toolbar button. In the PDE Toolbox GUI you choose Help... on the Help menu.

To help you getting started I have also collected some information and examples below:

Minicourse on FEMLAB: PostScript version; PDF version.
I recommend that you start with "Exercise 1: An electronic Detector" on pages 1-13 to 1-21, to get acquainted with FEMLAB. There are some supplementary files that e.g. provide answers to the exercises in this minicourse. I have installed them on your pde-xx account, but if you would like to work elsewhere you can download them here.

PDE Toolbox User's Guide: PDF version.
To get started, I suggest that you begin with working through the example on pages 1-9 to 1-17 in the "Getting Started" section of the chapter "Tutorial". Then you can continue with some of the examples in chapter "Examples", e.g. "Poisson's Equation on Unit Disk" on pages 2-2 to 2-5. Follow your own taste and interest. Experiment!

This assignment should be handed in w7.

Last modified: Mon Nov 12 17:18:37 MET 2001