Steady state heat transfer using Galerkin finite element method

The finite-element methods (FEMs) have become one of the major strategies for solving partial differential equations. Galerkin method is one of widely used FEM technique to solve the problems in heat transfer, fluid mechanics and mechanical systems. The objective of this paper is to perform error analysis for different types of heat flow vectors using Galerkin method for triangular elements. The heat flow vectors applied in this article include constant, exponential, sinusoidal and polynomial functions. On the basis of simulation results some guidelines has been suggested for each category of these heat flow vector focusing on method accuracy.