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A finite difference is a mathematical expression of the form f (x + b) − f (x + a).If a finite difference is divided by b − a, one gets a difference quotient.The approximation of derivatives by finite differences plays a central role in finite difference methods for the numerical solution of differential equations, especially boundary value problems.
For example, consider the ordinary differential equation ′ = + The Euler method for solving this equation uses the finite difference quotient (+) ′ to approximate the differential equation by first substituting it for u'(x) then applying a little algebra (multiplying both sides by h, and then adding u(x) to both sides) to get (+) + (() +).
This method takes advantage of linear combinations of point values to construct finite difference coefficients that describe derivatives of the function. For example, the second-order central difference approximation to the first derivative is given by:
In computational fluid dynamics, the MacCormack method (/məˈkɔːrmæk ˈmɛθəd/) is a widely used discretization scheme for the numerical solution of hyperbolic partial differential equations. This second-order finite difference method was introduced by Robert W. MacCormack in 1969. [1]
It is used to write finite difference approximations to derivatives at grid points. It is an example for numerical differentiation. This stencil is often used to approximate the Laplacian of a function of two variables. An illustration of the nine-point stencil in two dimensions.
For arbitrary stencil points and any derivative of order < up to one less than the number of stencil points, the finite difference coefficients can be obtained by solving the linear equations [6] ( s 1 0 ⋯ s N 0 ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ s 1 N − 1 ⋯ s N N − 1 ) ( a 1 ⋮ a N ) = d !
The simplest method is to use finite difference approximations. A simple two-point estimation is to compute the slope of a nearby secant line through the points (x, f(x)) and (x + h, f(x + h)). [1] Choosing a small number h, h represents a small change in x, and it can be either positive or negative.
Nonstandard finite difference schemes is a general set of methods in numerical analysis that gives numerical solutions to differential equations by constructing a discrete model. The general rules for such schemes are not precisely known. [1] [2]