A finite volume method for the approximation of convection–diffusion equations on general meshes

A new finite volume method is presented for approximating convection–diffusion equations. This method allows general (unstructured, non‐matching, distorted) meshes to be used without the numerical results being too much altered. The method has been tested for some well‐known benchmarks involving convection and convection–diffusion operators in two space dimensions. These numerical experiments show that it is between first and second‐order accurate, according to the type of the underlying mesh. Further numerical experiments regarding the striation equations have been carried out successfully. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.