Donald Greenspan

A variety of physical problems in such diverse fields as electrostatic field theory, heat and ideal fluid flow, and stress concentration theory reduce, under the assumption of axial symmetry, to the study of the elliptic partial differential equation ∂2u/∂x2 + ∂2u/∂y2 + k/y(∂u/∂y) = 0. Dirichlet-type problems associated with this equation are studied on regions whose boundaries include a nondegenerate portion of the x-axis and exceedingly accurate numerical methods are given for approximating solutions.