Theoretical and numerical investigation of the heat transfer problems in biosensory systems (Q2742785)

The authors consider the mathematical model of biosensor described by the transmission problem for the one-dimensional parabolic equation NEWLINE\[NEWLINE\rho_{i}C_{i} {\partial u_{i}\over\partial t}=\lambda_{i}{\partial^2 u_{i}\over\partial x^2}+ F_{i}(x,t), \quad x\in (x^{(i-1)},x^{(i)}),\;i=1,2,3,\;t\in(0,T],NEWLINE\]NEWLINE with boundary conditions \(u_1(0,t)=T_{a}+(T_{b}-T_{a})[1-\exp(-t/\Delta_{T})]\), \(u_3(1,t)=T_{a}-{\lambda_3\over k_3^{T}} {\partial u_{3}\over\partial x}|_{x=1}\), conjunction conditions \([\lambda{\partial u\over\partial x}|_{x^{(l)}}]=0\), \(l=1,2\), \({\lambda_{j}\over k_{j}^{T}} {\partial u_{l}\over\partial x}|_{x^{(l)}}=[u(x^{(l)},t)]\), \(j=l,l+1\), \(l=1,2\), and the initial condition \(u_{i}(x,0)=T_{a}\), \(i=1,2,3\). Here \(x^{(0)}=0\), \(x^{(3)}=1\), \([f(x^{(l)})]=f_{l+1}(x^{(l)})+ f_{l}(x^{(l)})\); \(\rho_{i}\), \(C_{i}\), \(\lambda_{i}\), \(i=1,2,3\) are specific densities, specific heat and heat conduction coefficients of membrane respectively; \(T_{a}\) is the initial temperature of the sensor; \(T_{b}\) is the temperature of the buffer; \(\Delta_{T}\) is the time constant for the temperature; \(k_{l}^{T}\), \(l=1,2,3\) are the heat transfer coefficients; \(F_{i}(x,t)\), \(i=1,2,3\) are source functions determined by solutions of a system of nonlinear parabolic equations. The existence and uniqueness of solution of the considered problem in the space \(C^{2,1}(Q^1_{T})\cap C^{1,0}(\overline Q^1_{T})\) is proved. Using the finite difference method the scheme of the method of lines with first-order accuracy on the spatial variable is constructed and the algorithm without saturation of accuracy in time based on the Cayley transform is proposed. The authors investigate the rate of convergence of the approximate solution.