A high‐order finite difference method for 1D nonhomogeneous heat equations

In this article a sixth‐order approximation method (in both temporal and spatial variables) for solving nonhomogeneous heat equations is proposed. We first develop a sixth‐order finite difference approximation scheme for a two‐point boundary value problem, and then heat equation is approximated by a system of ODEs defined on spatial grid points. The ODE system is discretized to a Sylvester matrix equation via boundary value method. The obtained algebraic system is solved by a modified Bartels‐Stewart method. The proposed approach is unconditionally stable. Numerical results are provided to illustrate the accuracy and efficiency of our approximation method along with comparisons with those generated by the standard second‐order Crank‐Nicolson scheme as well as Sun‐Zhang's recent fourth‐order method. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2009