Analysis of Diffusion Problems using Homotopy Perturbation and Variational Iteration Methods

In this paper, variational iteration method and homotopy perturbation method are applied to different forms of diffusion equation. The diffusion equations have found wide applications in heat transfer problems, theory of consolidation and many other problems in engineering. The methods proposed to solve the diffusion equations herein have been applied to a variety of problems in the recent past, and have proved to yield highly accurate solutions. Comparison is made between the exact solutions and the results of the variational iteration method (VIM) and homotopy perturbation method (HPM) in order to verify the accuracy of the results, revealing the fact that these methods are very effective and simple.