Solving Partial Differential equation in Python

[John J. Lee]

On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Calvin wrote:

> I need some backgound in Numeric Analysis to solve the PDE.
> so, hard to answer your question
>
> Trond Eivind Glomsrød wrote:
>
> > Roman Suzi <rnd at onego.ru> writes:
> >
> >
> >>Probably, if you could find library like LAPACK for linear algebra
> >>and use SWIG to make bindings to C for Python, you will have
> >>PDE solving functionality in Python.
> >>
> >
> > LAPACK doesn't do PDEs?

All I know about numerical solution of PDEs is that it isn't a
one-size-fits-all problem: it's a big subject, and there is no single
algorithm, or even LAPACK-sized collection of algorithms, that will solve
all PDE problems.

Good places to look (other than your library) are: the SAL website
(scientific applications on linux), netlib (linked to from SAL), the SciPy
website, and maybe the Scipy or Numerical Python mailing lists if you want
to find out if someone has already wrapped a library you have your eye on.

There are many books on PDE solving and numerical analysis in general.
Numerical Recipes (2nd ed) is a friendly place to start, though the actual
implementations in the books aren't the best, according to the experts.

If you want to write your own implementation for learning purposes, you
could write it in Python -- it will be slow, but who cares, since it won't
be used in anger.


John