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The difficulties experienced in the treatment of hyperbolic systems of equations by the finite element method (or other) spatial discretization procedures are well known. In this paper a temporal discretization precedes the spatial one which in principle is considered along the characteristics to achieve a self adjoint form. By a suitable expansion, the original co-ordinates are preserved and combined with the use of a standard Galerkin process to achieve an accurate discretization. It is shown that the process is equivalent to the Taylor-Galerkin methods of Donea.17 Several examples illustrate the accuracy and efficiency attainable in such problems as transport, shallow water equations, transonic flow etc.

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