Comparative study of the multiquadric and thin-plate spline radial basis functions for the transient-convective diffusion problems

The numerical solutions of the unsteady transient-convective diffusion problems are investigated by using multiquadric (MQ) and thin-plate spline (TPS) radial basis functions (RBFs) based on mesh-free collocation methods with global basis functions. The results of radial basis functions are compared with the mesh-dependent boundary element and finite difference methods as well as the analytical solution for high Péclet numbers. It is reported that for low Péclet numbers, MQ-RBF provides excellent agreement, while for high Péclet numbers, TPS-RBF is better than MQ-RBF. © World Scientific Publishing Company