Abstract: | In this article an error bound is derived for a piecewise linear finite element approximation of an enthalpy formulation of the Stefan problem; we have analyzed a semidiscrete Galerkin approximation and completely discrete scheme based on the backward Euler method and a linearized scheme is given and its convergence is also proved. A second‐order error estimates are derived for the Crank‐Nicolson Galerkin method. In the second part, a new class of finite difference schemes is proposed. Our approach is to introduce a new variable and transform the given equation into an equivalent system of equations. Then, we prove that the difference scheme is second order convergent. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq, 2004 |