Dear Jonathan,

Thank you very much for your gist* explanation of how to couple the PDEs along 
the upper boundary of a 2D mesh. Your source code is invaluable and has helped 
us to get back on track. We have two follow-up questions as a result:

Question 1:
As an extension of this problem, we're interested in adding a third PDE (PDE3) 
to the system (this PDE is similar in form to a standard advection-diffusion 
equation). This third PDE is defined only along the x-axis at the top of the 
Cartesian grid, just as with PDE1. A component in the source term of PDE3 is 
the cellvariable in PDE1. Furthermore, another component in the source term of 
PDE3 exists in the boundary condition of PDE2. That is to say, PDE1 and PDE3 
interact as fully coupled equations along the x-axis at the top of the mesh. 
PDE1 and PDE3 in-turn interact with PDE2 (anisotropic diffusion) along the top 
of the mesh only.

Our question is as follows; given that you have proposed the uncoupled method 
with repeated sweeping for solving the system of PDE1 and PDE2, does this 
preclude us from using the fully-coupled "&" method to couple between PDE1 and 
PDE3? Phrased differently, if we use the uncoupled sweeping method for PDE1 and 
PDE2, must we continue to use this approach when introducing more axial-domain 
PDEs?

Question 2:
In the FiPy coupled-diffusion example (hyperlink below**), the following 
statement is made: "The uncoupled method still works, but it can be 
advantageous to solve the two equations simultaneously." Can you please 
elaborate on this so that we may better understand what the disadvantages of 
using the uncoupled, repeated sweep method may be, relative to coupling using 
the "&" operator? Especially given that in our problem, the full-2D 
implementation has interactions only at the domain's top-edge and it seems to 
be wasteful of computing resources?

Sincerely,


-      Ian & Krishna

* https://gist.github.com/guyer/bb199559c00f6047d466daa18554d83d
** 
http://www.ctcms.nist.gov/fipy/examples/diffusion/generated/examples.diffusion.coupled.html


Ian Campbell | PhD Candidate
Electrochemical Science & Engineering Group
Room 506, City & Guilds Building, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, United 
Kingdom
Phone: +44 (0)7449 815 520 | E-mail: [email protected]

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