ANALYSIS OF HYBRID COMPUTER INTERFACE ERRORS ON THE SOLUTION OF PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS.

The effects of interface errors on the hybrid computer solution of the diffusion equation in two spatial dimension are analyzed. Two computational algorithms are considered: a discrete-space-continuous-time component sharing method and a continuous-space-discrete-time explicit/implicit method. With both methods the effects of converter gain and offset as well as the effects of sampling on the solution are analyzed. Equations are obtained from which the magnitude of the errors due to sampling and quantization can be estimated. The effect of discretization interval on the converter errors is analyzed with both methods. It can be concluded from this study that the effects of interface errors on solution accuracy can be controlled and their magnitude estimated. Hence, decisions for or against the use of hybrid computer techniques should not be based on interface error considerations, but rather on such items as solution time, programming difficulty and equipment cost and availability.