Modified Method of Characteristics for Simulating Microscale Energy Transport

This paper presents a new numerical scheme for simulating multidimensional transient and steady-state microscale energy transport. The new method is based on the method of characteristics that follows heat carriers along their pathline. Unlike traditional methods, it uses a fixed computational grid and follows the heat carriers backward in time. The method 1) is accurate, 2) is unconditionally stable, 3) can deal with complex geometries without a large increase in computational cost, and 4) can be used for solving coupled equations using other numerical schemes. First, the numerical scheme is described. Then, simulations for transient and steady-state phonon transport in dielectric thin films are discussed. Numerical results are compared with analytical and reported numerical solutions and good agreement is obtained. @DOI: 10.1115/1.1795233#