Application of spectral element method for solving Sobolev equations with error estimation

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to numerically solving the Sobolev equations that have several applications in physics and mechanical engineering. First, the temporal derivative is discretized by the Crank-Nicolson finite difference technique to obtain a semi-discrete scheme in the temporal direction. Afterward, the stability and convergence analysis of the time semi-discrete scheme are proven by applying the energy method. It also implies that the convergence order in the temporal direction is O(dt2). Second, a fully discrete formula has been acquired by discretizing the spatial derivatives via Legendre spectral element method (LSEM). This method applies the Lagrange polynomial based on the Gauss-Legendre-Lobatto (GLL) points. Moreover, an error estimation is given for the obtained fully discrete scheme. Eventually, the two-dimensional Sobolev equations are solved by using the proposed procedure. The accuracy and efficiency of the mentioned procedure are demonstrated by several numerical examples.