Efficient Temporal Third/Fourth-Order Finite Element Method for a Time-Fractional Mobile/Immobile Transport Equation with Smooth and Nonsmooth Data

Materials (Basel). 2021 Oct 3;14(19):5792. doi: 10.3390/ma14195792.

Abstract

In recent years, the numerical theory of fractional models has received more and more attention from researchers, due to the broad and important applications in materials and mechanics, anomalous diffusion processes and other physical phenomena. In this paper, we propose two efficient finite element schemes based on convolution quadrature for solving the time-fractional mobile/immobile transport equation with the smooth and nonsmooth data. In order to deal with the weak singularity of solution near t=0, we choose suitable corrections for the derived schemes to restore the third/fourth-order accuracy in time. Error estimates of the two fully discrete schemes are presented with respect to data regularity. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the schemes.

Keywords: Riemann–Liouville derivative; convolution quadrature; error estimates; finite element method; mobile/immobile transport equation; third/fourth-order backward difference formula.