Re: Solving PDE; novice question

[Ivan Sutoris]

On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 6:58 AM, John B. Thoo <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello, everyone.
>
> I've had Octave loaded on my PowerBook for a long time (v. 2.1.73)
> and have used it *very* lightly for very simple things, mostly to
> obtain simple plots.  Now I have a good reason to upgrade Octave and
> learn to use it better: I need to solve a PDE.  Henry Mollet sent me
> instructions on upgrading to v. 3.x some time ago and I've kept those
> instructions, so I can upgrade.  (Thanks, Henry!) :-)
>
> Now my questions.  The questions are about Octave, but please note
> that I don't have any experience with numerics or coding at all, so
> please be gentle.
>
> 1)  Can Octave be used to solve an equation like this:
>
>   u_{tt}(x,t) - C * u_{xx}(x,t)
>   = B * \int_{-infty}^{+\infty} K(x-y,y) * u(x-y,t) * u(y,t) dy,
>
> where  B, C  are constants and  K  is some kernel.
>
> 2) If the answer is yes, then where should I look in the
> documentation (or elsewhere) to learn (in baby steps) how to solve
> such an equation eventually?  (I think one good step along the way,
> after some initial baby steps solving some baby equations, would be
> to solve the inviscid Burgers equation:
>
>   u_t + u*u_x = 0,  u = u(x,t).)
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> ---John.

I'm not expert on PDE's, but I think Octave itself does not have
specific function for PDE solving, and I don't see such package at
Octave-Forge either. I've discovered some finite element code for
Octave on the web [1], [2] , but haven't tried it myself.

[1] FEMOCTAVE: http://ideas.repec.org/c/cod/octave/c090801.html
[2] OctMesh: http://octmesh.forja.rediris.es/

Regards
Ivan Sutoris