Iterative solution and finite difference approximations to 3D microscale heat transport equation

Numerical techniques are proposed to solve a 3D time dependent microscale h eat transport equation. A second-order finite difference scheme in both tim e and space is introduced and the unconditional stability of the finite dif ference scheme is proved. A computational procedure is designed to solve th e resulting sparse linear system at each time step with a few iterative met hods and their performances are compared experimentally. Numerical experime nts are presented to demonstrate the accuracy of the finite difference sche me and the efficiency of the proposed computational procedure. (C) 2001 IMA CS. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.