Zurab Vashakidze

An Application of the Legendre Polynomials for the Numerical Solution of the Nonlinear Dynamical Kirchhoff String Equation

abstract:
In the present work, the classical nonlinear Kirchhoff string equation is considered. A three-layer symmetrical semi-discrete scheme with respect to the temporal variable is applied for finding an approximate solution to the initial-boundary value problem for this equation, in which the value of the gradient of a non-linear term is taken at the middle point. This approach is essential because the inversion of the linear operator is sufficient for computations of approximate solutions for each temporal step. The variation method is applied to the spatial variable. Differences of the Legendre polynomials are used as coordinate functions. This choice of Legendre polynomials is also important for numerical realization. This way makes it possible to get a system whose structure does not essentially differ from the corresponding system of difference equations allowing us to use the methods developed for solving a system of difference equations. An application of the suggested variational-difference scheme for the numerical treatment of the stated nonlinear problem gives us an opportunity to solve the system of linear equations instead of a nonlinear one. It is proved that a matrix of the system of Galerkin's linear equations is positively defined and the stability of the factorization method is established.
The program of the numerical implementation with the corresponding interface is created based on the suggested algorithm, and numerical computations are carried out for the model problems.

Mathematics Subject Classification: 65F05, 65F50, 65M06, 65M60, 65N12, 65N22, 65Q30

Key words and phrases: Non-linear Kirchhoff string equation, Cauchy problem, three-layer semi-discrete scheme, Galerkin method, Cholesky decomposition