Finite difference/finite element methods for distributed-order time fractional diffusion equations (Q2399167)

The paper presents a finite difference/finite element solution for a class of distributed-order time fractional diffusion equations (DOFDE) on bounded domains. The Caputo fractional derivative is discretized for the time domain and a semi-discrete variational formulation of the DOFDE is developed followed by the finite element approximation in the spatial direction. Two unconditionally stable numerical schemes are developed to solve the problems. The stability and convergence of the numerical scheme are discussed. To demonstrate the applicability of the numerical schemes, two examples are considered. In the first example, the DOFDE is solved in a one-dimensional domain while the second example considers the problem in two-dimensional domains. The solutions present reasonable accuracy. Several lemmas and theorems are also proved.