Solid Cellular Automaton Method for the Solution of Physical Field

This paper introduces a new computational technique-solid cellular automaton-for the solution of physical field. The thought of cellular automaton comes from the self-organization theory in biology. In this theory, the state of a cell is determined by the states of itself and its neighbors. The information outside the neighbor domain does not contribute to the state of the cell. The global analysis of structure is converted to a series of local analyses by using the idea of cellular automaton. Based on the control equations in physical field, the updating rule to describe the relation between cell and its neighbors is developed. This method is used to the analysis of fluid flow and the computational steps as well as the results are presented. Comparisons among solid CA modeling result, finite element method modeling result and analytical result indicate that the solid CA is a reliable method in the solution of physical field.