Chebyshev pseudospectral method for computing numerical solution of convection–diffusion equation

A method for computing highly accurate numerical solutions of 1D convection–diffusion equations is proposed. In this method, the equation is first discretized with respect to the spatial variable, transforming the original problem into a set of ordinary differential equations, and then the resulting system is integrated in time by the fourth-order Runge–Kutta method. Spatial discretization is done by using the Chebyshev pseudospectral collocation method. Before describing the method, we review a finite difference-based method by Salkuyeh [D. Khojasteh Salkuyeh, On the finite difference approximation to the convection–diffusion equation, Appl. Math. Comput. 179 (2006) 79–86], and, contrary to the proposal of the author, we show that this method is not suitable for problems involving time dependent boundary conditions, which calls for revision. Stability analysis based on pseudoeigenvalues to determine the maximum time step for the proposed method is also carried out. Superiority of the proposed method over a revised version of Salkuyeh’s method is verified by numerical examples.