Numerical approximation of the generalized regularized long wave equation using Petrov–Galerkin finite element method

Abstract

The generalized regularized long wave (GRLW) equation has been developed to model a variety of physical phenomena such as ion-acoustic and magnetohydro dynamic waves in plasma,nonlinear transverse waves in shallow water and phonon packets in nonlinear crystals. This paper aims to develop andanalyze a powerful numerical scheme for the nonlinear GRLWequation by Petrov–Galerkin method in which the elementshape functions are cubic and weight functions are quadratic B-splines. The proposed method is implemented to three ref-erence problems involving propagation of the single solitarywave, interaction of two solitary waves and evolution of solitons with the Maxwellian initial condition. The variational for-mulation and semi-discrete Galerkin scheme of the equation are firstly constituted. We estimate rate of convergence of such an approximation. Using Fourier stability analysis of thelinearized scheme we show that the scheme is uncondition-ally stable. To verify practicality and robustness of the new scheme error norms L2, L∞ and three invariants I1, I2,and I3 are calculated. The computed numerical results are compared with other published results and confirmed to be precise and effective.