A Galerkin method of \(O(h^2)\) for singular boundary value problems (Q1607861)

The authors propose a numerical Galerkin method to approximate the unique solution \(u\) of the singular two-point boundary value problem \[ -\frac{1}{p} (p u')' + f(x,u)=0,\quad 0<x<1, \] with mixed boundary conditions \[ (pu')(0^+)=u(1)=0. \] (Some hypotheses on the data functions \(p\) and \(f\) are imposed so that the problem is well-posed.) The main feature is that the function \(\frac{1}{p}\) is not necessarily integrable on \((0,1)\), and this allows for instance to choose \(p(x)=x^\alpha\) with \(\alpha\geq 1\). The patch functions considered in the paper are the same considered by \textit{Ph. G. Ciarlet, F. Natterer} and \textit{R. S. Varga} [Numer. Math. 15, 87-99 (1970; Zbl 0211.19103)], but there the function \(\frac{1}{p}\) was taken in \(\text{ L}^1(0,1)\). The method is proved to be of order \(O(h^2)\), being \(h\) the norm of the mesh, in case the function \(p\) is an increasing function on \((0,1)\). In the last section numerical examples are given, for \(p(x)=x^\alpha\), with \(\alpha=1\), \(0<\alpha <1\), and \(\alpha > 1\).