Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2016) 131: 300
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2016-16300-7

Regular Article

A comparison of numerical and semi-analytical methods for the case of heat transfer equations arising in porous medium

¹ Department of Computer Sciences, Faculty of Mathematical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, G.C. Tehran, Iran
² Department of Cognitive Modeling, Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, G.C. Tehran, Iran

^* e-mail: k_parand@sbu.ac.ir

Received: 28 June 2016
Accepted: 29 July 2016
Published online: 7 September 2016

Abstract

Natural convective heat transfer in porous media which is of importance in the design of canisters for nuclear waste disposal has received considerable attention during the past few decades. This paper presents a comparison between two different analytical and numerical methods, i.e. pseudospectral and Adomian decomposition methods. The pseudospectral approach makes use of the orthogonal rational Jacobi functions; this method reduces the solution of the problem to a solution of a system of algebraic equations. Numerical results are compared with each other, showing that the pseudospectral method leads to more accurate results and is applicable on similar problems.