Infinite series symmetry reduction solutions to the modified KdV–Burgers equation

Abstract

From the point of view of approximate symmetry, the modified Korteweg-de Vries–Burgers (mKdV–Burgers) equation with weak dissipation is investigated. The symmetry of a system of the corresponding partial differential equations which approximate the perturbed mKdV–Burgers equation is constructed and the corresponding general approximate symmetry reduction is derived; thereby infinite series solutions and general formulae can be obtained. The obtained result shows that the zero-order similarity solution to the mKdV–Burgers equation satisfies the Painlevé II equation. Also, at the level of travelling wave reduction, the general solution formulae are given for any travelling wave solution of an unperturbed mKdV equation. As an illustrative example, when the zero-order tanh profile solution is chosen as an initial approximate solution, physically approximate similarity solutions are obtained recursively under the appropriate choice of parameters occurring during computation.