Numerical solution of highly non-linear fractional order reaction advection diffusion equation using the cubic B-spline collocation method

Abstract

In this article, the approximate solution of the fractional-order reaction advection-diffusion equation with the prescribed initial and boundary conditions is found with the help of a cubic B-spline collocation method, which is unconditionally stable and convergent. The accuracy of the scheme is validated by applying the method on four existing problems having analytical solutions and through the evaluation of the absolute errors between numerical results and the exact solutions for different particular cases. Applying the proposed method on the last two numerical problems, it is shown that the method performs better than the existing methods even for very less number of spatial and temporal discretizations. The main contribution of the article is to develop an efficient method to solve the proposed fractional order nonlinear problem and to find the effect on solute concentration graphically due to increase in the non-linearity in the diffusion term for different particular values of parameters. © 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston 2021.