Miscellaneous Applications of Differential Quadrature Method

In the previous chapters, we have described the applications of the DQ method to fluid mechanics and solid mechanics. Apart from these two areas, the DQ method has been applied in many other areas. For the solution of general partial differential equations, Mansell et al. (1993) compared the DQ method with conventional numerical approaches. Tomasiello (1998) also discussed the application of the DQ method for general initial-boundary-value problems. Another example is the application of the DQ method to solve ocean engineering problems by Gutierrez, Laura and Rossi (1994). In this chapter, we will briefly describe applications of the DQ method to heat transfer, chemical rector, lubrication, waveguide analysis problems, and to the solution of Helmholtz equation. The effect of mesh point distribution on the accuracy of the DQ results will also be discussed in this chapter. It should be indicated that some of these applications are still under active investigation, so the results reported here are very incomplete.