A Galerkin Solution for Burgers' Equation Using Cubic B-Spline Finite Elements

Numerical solutions for Burgers' equation based on the Galerkins' method using cubic B-splines as both weight and interpolation functions are set up. It is shown that this method is capable of solving Burgers' equation accurately for values of viscosity ranging from very small to large. Three standard problems are used to validate the proposed algorithm. A linear stability analysis shows that a numerical scheme based on a Cranck-Nicolson approximation in time is unconditionally stable.