Analysis of meshless local radial point interpolation (MLRPI) on a nonlinear partial integro-differential equation arising in population dynamics

Abstract

Abstract In this paper the meshless local radial point interpolation (MLRPI) method is applied to simulate a nonlinear partial integro-differential equation arising in population dynamics. This PDE is a competition model in which similar individuals are competing for the same resources. It is a kind of reaction–diffusion equation with integral term corresponding to nonlocal consumption of resources. In MLRPI method, it does not require any background integration cells so that all integrations are carried out locally over small quadrature domains of regular shapes, such as circles or squares in two dimensions and spheres or cubes in three dimensions. The point interpolation method is proposed to construct shape functions using the radial basis functions. A one-step time discretization method is employed to approximate the time derivative. To treat the nonlinearity, a simple predictor–corrector scheme is performed. Also the integral term, which is a kind of convolution, is treated by the cubic spline interpolation. The numerical studies on sensitivity analysis and convergence analysis show that our approach is stable. Finally, two numerical examples are presented showing the behavior of the solution and the efficiency of the proposed method.