| Citation: | Tejas Sharma, Shreekant Pathak, Gargi Trivedi, Vishant Shah, Bhavyata Patel, Trupti Shah. NUMERICAL SOLUTION OF FRACTIONAL ORDER NONLINEAR PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATION[J]. Journal of Applied Analysis & Computation, 2026, 16(2): 779-793. doi: 10.11948/20250026 |
This article develops a finite element method (FEM) for solving nonlinear fractional-order partial differential equations (PDEs) using the Caputo fractional derivative. The scheme achieves second-order convergence in L2 and L∞ norms and is supported by a rigorous qualitative analysis, including existence, uniqueness, and Ulam-Hyers stability, established via nonlinear functional analysis and fixed-point theorems. Applied to a fractionalorder Burgers' equation modeling longitudinal dispersion in homogeneous porous media, the method demonstrates superior accuracy compared to finite difference and B-spline Galerkin methods. Numerical results validate robustness across fractional orders α ∈ {0.5, 0.75, 1.0}, with applications in environmental engineering and fluid dynamics.
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Approximate solution
Exact solution C(x, t) of Eq. (4.1) with boundary conditions (4.2) and initial condition (4.3).
Approximate and exact solutions
Exact solution
Pointwise error