Numerical elucidation of three-dimensional problems in the chemical engineering graduate curriculum

Abstract

We illustrate in the present paper how steady-state and unsteady-steady three-dimensional transport phenomena problems can be solved using the Chebyshev orthogonal collocation technique. All problems are elucidated using the ubiquitous software: MATLAB®. The treated case studies include: (1) unsteady-state heat conduction in a parallelepiped body, (2) quenching of a brick, (3) transient diffusion of a colorant in a liquid, and (4) steady-state natural convection in an enclosure. Whenever possible, the results obtained with the spectral method are bench-marked against the analytical solution in order to validate the proposed numerical technique. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 24:866–875, 2016; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cae; DOI 10.1002/cae.21756.