Lie symmetries, reduction and exact solutions of the (1+2)-dimensional nonlinear problem modeling the solid tumour growth

Abstract

The well known nonlinear model for describing the solid tumour growth (Byrne et al. 2003) is under study using an approach based on Lie symmetries. It is shown that the model in the two-dimensional (in space) approximation forms a (1+2)-dimensional boundary value problem, which admits a highly nontrivial Lie symmetry. The special case involving the power-law nonlinearities is examined in details. The symmetries derived are applied for the reduction of the nonlinear boundary value problem in question to problems of lower dimensionality. Finally, the reduced problems with correctly-specified coefficients were exactly solved and the exact solutions derived were analysed, in particular, some plots were build in order to understand the time-space behaviour of these solutions and to discuss their biological interpretation.