Blow-up for semidiscretizations of reaction-diffusion equations (Q1917449): Difference between revisions

The paper deals with the semilinear parabolic equation \(u_t-u_{xx}=f(u)\), \(0<x<1\), \(t>0\) with boundary conditions \(u(0,t)=u(1,t)=0\) and initial condition \(u(x,0)=u_0(x)\). This problem arises in combustion theory where blow-up phenomena play an important role. After discretizing the spatial coordinate \(x\), the authors consider a system of ordinary differential equations approximating the original problem. Using a discrete form of the maximum principle, necessary and sufficient conditions are given on the function \(f(u)\) for blow-up in the above semidiscretization, and bounds on the blow-up time are provided. Moreover, the convergence of the blow-up times of the semidiscrete problems to the continuous blow-up time is established. Some numerical experiments with \(f(u)= u^2\) and \(u_0(x)=20\sin \pi x\) confirm the method.