A free boundary value problem for water invading an unsaturated medium (Q1094272)

A mathematical model arising in the filtration of a fluid through a porous medium is discussed. The variational formulation of the original free boundary problem reads as follows. Find the pair \(\{\) v(x,t); s(t)\(\}\) with \[ v: [0,T]\to \dot H^ 1=\{w: w\in H^ 1(0,1),\quad w(0)=0\} \] such that \[ (v',w')+(\dot v,w)=v(1)(xv,w')-sv(1)(1,w) \] for all \(w\in \dot H^ 1\), \(s=-v(1)s\), with initial data \[ v(x,0)=g'(x)+1,\quad 0\leq x\leq 1,\quad s(0)=1, \] where v' and \D{v} denote, respectively, differentiation with respect to x and t, (.,.) denotes the inner product in \(L^ 2\), g is a given function. Following the Galerkin method a finite element solution is constructed. Moreover, a uniqueness result and an error estimate are obtained.