Analytical solutions for the multi-term time-fractional diffusion-wave/diffusion equations in a finite domain

Abstract

Multi-term time-fractional differential equations have been used for describing important physical phenomena. However, studies of the multi-term time-fractional partial differential equations with three kinds of nonhomogeneous boundary conditions are still limited.In this paper, a method of separating variables is used to solve the multi-term time-fractional diffusion-wave equation and the multi-term time-fractional diffusion equation in a finite domain. In the two equations, the time-fractional derivative is defined in the Caputo sense. We discuss and derive the analytical solutions of the two equations with three kinds of nonhomogeneous boundary conditions, namely, Dirichlet, Neumann and Robin conditions, respectively.