Meshless Local B-Spline Collocation Method for Two-Dimensional Heat Conduction Problems With Nonhomogenous and Time-Dependent Heat Sources

This paper presents a new approach of meshless local B-spline based finite difference (FD) method for transient 2D heat conduction problems with nonhomogenous and time-dependent heat sources. In this method, any governing equations are discretized by B-spline approximation which is implemented as a generalized FD technique using local B-spline collocation scheme. The key aspect of the method is that any derivative is stated as neighboring nodal values based on B-spline interpolants. The set of neighboring nodes is allowed to be randomly distributed. This allows enhanced flexibility to be obtained in the simulation. The method is truly meshless as no mesh connectivity is required for field variable approximation or integration. Galerkin implicit scheme is employed for time integration. Several transient 2D heat conduction problems with nonuniform heat sources in arbitrary complex geometries are examined to show the efficacy of the method. Comparison of the simulation results with solutions from other numerical methods in the literature is given. Good agreement with reference numerical methods is obtained. The method is shown to be simple and accurate for the time-dependent problems. Copyright © 2017 by ASME.