A Fourth Order Numerical Scheme for Unsteady Mixed Convection Boundary Layer Flow: A Comparative Computational Study

Abstract

In this paper, a three-stage fourth-order numerical scheme is proposed. The first and second stages of the proposed scheme are explicit, whereas the third stage is implicit. A fourth-order compact scheme is considered to discretize space-involved terms. The stability of the fourth-order scheme in space and time is checked using the von Neumann stability criterion for the scalar case. The stability region obtained by the scheme is more than the one given by explicit Runge–Kutta methods. The convergence conditions are found for the system of partial differential equations, which are non-dimensional equations of heat transfer of Stokes first and second problems. The comparison of the proposed scheme is made with the existing Crank–Nicolson scheme. From this comparison, it can be concluded that the proposed scheme converges faster than the Crank–Nicolson scheme. It also produces less relative error than the Crank–Nicolson method for time-dependent problems.