Numerical solution of nonlinear differential boundary value problems using adaptive non-overlapping domain decomposition method

ABSTRACT

This work aims is to study a nonlinear second-order boundary value differential elliptic problem in one dimension where the nonlinearity concerns the solution and its first derivative. We assume that the source term can be non-smooth and the nonlinearity can grow faster than quadratic. First, we show the existence of a non-negative weak solution if we assume the existence of a super-solution. Second, we present a numerical algorithm to compute an approximation of the non-negative weak solution. The proposed algorithm is decomposed in two steps, the first one is devoted to computing a super-solution, and in the second one, the algorithm computes a sequence of solutions of an intermediate problem obtained by using the Yosida approximation of the nonlinearity. This sequence converges to the non-negative weak solution of the nonlinear equation. The numerical method is an application of the Newton method to the discretized version of the problem, but at each iteration, the resulting system can be indefinite. To overcome this difficulty, we introduce an adaptive non-overlapping domain decomposition method.

Keywords:

• Nonlinear ODE's
• nonlinear PDE's
• variational method
• finite elements
• domain decomposition

2010 Mathematics Subject Classifications:

• 34B15
• 65L10
• 34L30

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the program Hubert Curien ‘Utique’ of the ‘French Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ and the ‘Tunisian Ministry of Education and Research’ for financial support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).