Abstract
For extremely short durations oral very low temperatures (near absolute zero), the classical Fourier heat conduction equation fails and has to be replaced by a hyperbolic equation to account for finite thermal wave propagation. During the last few years, there has been a growing interest in numerical simulation of the hyperbolic heal conduction problem. The schemes used in previous studies were either the classical upwind and central difference or the MacCormack's predictor-corrector schemes. As a result, spurious oscillations or excessive diffusion appeared near the discontinuities. This paper presents a method that makes use of the characteristics to suppress these oscillations or diffusions. The equations governing the hyperbolic heat conduction problem are first transformed into characteristic equations, and the first-order upwind, second-order upwind (Beam-Warming)and second-order central (Lax-Wendroff)schemes are applied based on the direction of the characteristic velocity. It is shown that simple implementation of these schemes cannot lead to satisfactory results. Subsequently, the high-order TVD (Total Variation Diminishing) schemes are introduced to solve the problem. These TVD schemes are oscillation free and can give high-order accuracy without introducing wiggles. The principle of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by proper switching between Lax-Wendroff and Beam-Warming schemes. Basically, the higher-order scheme is used in the calculation domain, except at discontinuities and local extrema where it is switched to the first-order scheme. Several examples are used to demonstrate the success of the numerical method.