I have a PDE, which I need to calculate the Courant number for. Does anyone have any resources on that which can help I. I do want a general way of calculating the number if that is possible, so I can use it further.
Calculating the Courant number for a PDE
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ordinary-differential-equations
numerical-methods
pde
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3Forgive my ignorance, but what is the Courant number? – 2011-01-09
1 Answers
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The wikipedia article explains it pretty clearly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courant%E2%80%93Friedrichs%E2%80%93Lewy_condition
It's simply the velocity in the given direction multiplied by the time step and divided by the step size in the given direction.
In 1D that would be: vx * dt / dx.
If you're talking about the constant that the Courant number needs to be smaller than, that's dependent on your system.
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0There is some way of finding it, but it's dependent on the system you're studying. So no, there is no "general" constant you can just calculate without needing to know the specifics of the esystem. – 2011-02-09