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Boundary Conditions

 

The boundary conditions, i.e. Eqs. 2, are defined in subroutine bcond(x,y,ipiece,c,g,itype). The point is passed in through the real variables x and y, and the boundary segment number (see section 5.3) is passed in through the integer variable ipiece. The user defines the functions and from Eq. 2 and returns them through the real variables c and g, and sets the integer variable itype to be 1, 2 or 3 to indicate whether the boundary condition is Dirichlet, natural (Neumann), or mixed (Robin), respectively.

With , the second form of the boundary condition is the `natural' boundary condition for the differential operator in Eq. 1. Often, the desired boundary condition is the Neumann condition . In many cases it is possible to represent the Neumann condition in the form of the natural condition.

If the outward normal to the boundary of the domain makes an angle with the x-axis, then and . The operator for Neumann boundary conditions is

Contrast this to the operator for the natural boundary conditions

  1. If (Laplace, Poisson or Helmholtz equation), then the natural boundary condition is Neumann.

  2. If but they are not identically 1, multiply the boundary condition by p to get the correct form. For example, with the mixed condition

    the correct form for the mixed natural boundary condition is

    So the coefficient of u is and the right hand side is and in subroutine bcond you set c = and g = .

  3. If and the sides of the domain are parallel to the x and y axes, then from the definition of in terms of , the mixed boundary condition can be expressed as

  4. If and the sides are not parallel to the axes, it is not, in general, possible to express Neumann conditions. However, in some special cases it might be possible.



next up previous contents
Next: Domain and Initial Up: Problem Definition Previous: Equation



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