Fourth-order compact finite difference method for fourth-order nonlinear elliptic boundary value problems (Q950075)

The authors propose a compact finite difference method for the fourth-order nonlinear problem \[ \begin{aligned} &\Delta ( k( x,y) \Delta u) =f( x,y,u,\Delta u) ,\;( x,y) \in \Omega , \\ &u( x,y) =g( x,y) ,\;\Delta u( x,y) =g^{*}( x,y) ,\;( x,y) \in \partial \Omega , \end{aligned} \] and three iteration processes for resolving the resulting nonlinear discrete system. The existence and uniqueness of the solution are investigated by the method of upper and lower solutions, without any requirements of the monotonicity of the nonlinear term. The convergence and the fourth-order accuracy of the proposed method are proved. Numerical results demonstrate the high efficiency and advances of this new approach.