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Preface
It has been nearly 4 years since the rst edition of Numerical Methods for Engineers and
Scientists Using MATLAB
®
was published. During this time, most of the material in the
rst edition has been rigorously class tested, resulting in many enhancements and modi-
cations to make the new edition even more effective and user-friendly.
As in the rst edition, the primary objective of this book is to provide the reader
with a broad knowledge of the fundamentals of numerical methods utilized in various
disciplines in engineering and science. The powerful software MATLAB is introduced
at the outset and is assimilated throughout the book to perform symbolic, graphical, and
numerical tasks. The textbook, written at the junior/senior level, methodically covers a
wide array of techniques ranging from curve tting a set of data to numerically solving
initial- and boundary-value problems. Each method is accompanied by at least one fully
worked-out example, followed by either a user-dened function or a MATLAB script le.
MATLAB built-in functions are also presented for each main topic covered.
This book consists of 10 chapters. Chapter 1 presents the necessary background material
and is divided into two parts: (1) differential equations, matrix analysis, and the matrix
eigenvalue problem, and (2) computational errors, approximations, iterative methods, and
rates of convergence.
Chapter 2 gives an in-depth introduction to the essentials of MATLAB as related
to numerical methods. The chapter addresses fundamental features such as built-in
functionsand commands, formatting options, vector and matrix operations, program ow
control, symbolic operations, and plotting capabilities. The reader also learns how to write
a user-dened function or a MATLAB script le to perform specic tasks.
Chapters 3 and 4 introduce numerical methods for solving equations. Chapter 3 focuses
on nding roots of equations of a single variable, while Chapter 4 covers methods for
solving linear and nonlinear systems of equations.
Chapter 5 is completely devoted to curve tting and interpolation techniques, includ-
ing the fast Fourier transform (FFT). Chapter 6 covers numerical differentiation and
integrationmethods. Chapters 7 and 8 present numerical methods for solving initial-value
problems and boundary-value problems, respectively.
Chapter 9 covers the numerical solution of the matrix eigenvalue problem, which entails
techniques to approximate a few or all eigenvalues of a matrix.
Chapter 10 presents numerical methods for solving elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic
partial differential equations, specically those that frequently arise in engineering and
science.
Pedagogy of the Book
The book is written in a user-friendly fashion that intends to make the material easy to
follow and understand by the reader. The topics are presented systematically using the
following format: