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A Meshless Method Using the Radial Basis

Functions for Numerical Solution of the


Regularized Long Wave Equation
Ali Shokri, Mehdi Dehghan
Department of Applied Mathematics, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science,
Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Received 2 November 2008; accepted 26 January 2009
Published online 9 April 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).
DOI 10.1002/num.20457
This article discusses on the solution of the regularized long wave (RLW) equation, which is introduced to
describe the development of the undular bore, has been used for modeling in many branches of science and
engineering. A numerical method is presented to solve the RLW equation. The main idea behind this numer-
ical simulation is to use the collocation and approximating the solution by radial basis functions (RBFs).
To avoid solving the nonlinear system, a predictor-corrector scheme is proposed. Several test problems are
given to validate the new technique. The numerical simulation, includes the propagation of a solitary wave,
interaction of two positive solitary waves, interaction of a positive and a negative solitary wave, the eval-
uation of Maxwellian pulse into stable solitary waves and the development of an undular bore. The three
invariants of the motion are calculated to determine the conservation properties of the algorithm. The results
of numerical experiments are compared with analytical solution and with those of other recently published
methods to conrmthe accuracy and efciency of the presented scheme. 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer
Methods Partial Differential Eq 26: 807825, 2010
Keywords: collocation; predictor-corrector; predictor-corrector thin plate splines radial basis
functions(PC-TPS-RBFs); radial basis functions (RBFs); regularized long wave (RLW) equation; thin plate
splines (TPS)
I. INTRODUCTION
Finite difference methods are known as the rst techniques for solving partial differential equa-
tions. Even though these methods are very effective for solving various kinds of partial differential
equations, conditional stability of explicit nite difference procedures and the need to use large
amount of CPU time in implicit nite difference schemes limit the applicability of these methods
[1]. Furthermore, these methods provide the solution of the problem on mesh points only and
accuracy of the techniques is reduced in non-smooth and non-regular domains [1].
Correspondence to: Mehdi Dehghan, Department of AppliedMathematics, Facultyof Mathematics andComputer Science,
Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran (e-mail: mdehghan@aut.ac.ir)
2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
808 SHOKRI AND DEHGHAN
To avoid the mesh generation, in recent years meshless techniques have attracted attention of
researchers. In a meshless (meshfree) method, a set of scattered nodes are used instead of meshing
the domain of the problem [27].
In the last 20 years, the radial basis functions method is known as a powerful tool for scattered
data interpolation problem. In the last decade, there has been some advance developments in
applying the radial basis functions (RBFs) for the numerical solution of various types of partial
differential equations (PDEs). The initial development was due to the pioneering work of Kansa
[8, 9] who directly collocated the RBFs for the approximated solution of the equations. The main
advantage of numerical procedures which use radial basis functions over traditional techniques is
meshless property of these methods. In general, the Kansas method has [10] several advantages
over the widely used nite element method (FEM), in that
1. it is a truly meshless method in which the collocation points can be chosen freely (no con-
nectivity between points is required as FEM). Hence, the complicated meshing problem
has been avoided;
2. it is an independent spatial dimension which can easily be extended to solve high
dimensional problems.
Radial basis functions are used actively for solving partial differential equations. For example see
[11] and the references therein. The interested readers can see [1214] for applications of radial
basis functions to some problems in applied sciences.
To the best of our knowledge, the most popular methods might be the collocation method, the
fundamental solutions method, the boundary knots method, the Dual Reciprocity Method (DRM),
and the Galerkin method. For more descriptions see [10] and references therein. More recently,
Hon and Wu [15] gave a theoretical justication in combining the RBFs with those advanced
techniques of domain decomposition, multilevel/multigrid, Schwarz iterative schemes, and pre-
conditioning in the FEM discipline. Though it is very popular to use the Galerkin method in the
literature of FEM, the Galerkin method is seldom used in the meshless RBFs society. One reason
is that the usual Galerkin method is not so efcient as it is in FEM, because the computation of the
integrals would be complicated [10]. The interested reader can see [1622] for more investigations
in RBFs.
A problem of real interest for applications is the generalized Benjamin-Bona-Mahony (BBM)
equations in the form
U
t
+U
x
U
xxt
+g(U)
x
= 0, (1.1)
with the initial data
U(x, 0) = f (x) 0, x , (1.2)
where U(x, t ) represents the uid velocity in the horizontal direction x, and is a positive con-
stant, R, and g(U) is a C
2
-smooth nonlinear function. When g(U)
x
= UU
x
with = 1, Eq.
(1.1) is the alternative regularized long-wave (RLW) equation.
II. A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE EXISTING METHODS AND THE APPLICATIONS
The RLW equation is an alternative description of nonlinear dispersive waves to the more usual
Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation. It has been shown to have solitary wave solutions and to
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
MESHLESS METHOD FOR RLW EQUATION 809
govern a large number of important physical phenomena such as the nonlinear transverse waves
in shallow water, ion-acoustic, and magnetohydrodynamic waves in plasma and phonon packets
in nonlinear crystals, the anharmonic lattice longtitudinal dispersive waves in elastic rods, pres-
sure waves in liquidgas bubble mixtures, rotating ow down a tube, the lossless propagation
of shallow water waves, thermally exited phonon packets in low-temperature nonlinear crystals
[23, 24].
As is said in [24] the RLW equation was originally introduced to describe the behavior of the
undular bore by Peregrine [25], has been used for modeling in many branches of science and
engineering. An analytical solution for the RLW equation was found under the restricted initial
and boundary conditions in [26]. Because the analytical solution of the RLW equation is not
very useful, the availability of accurate and efcient numerical methods is essential. Numerical
solutions of the RLW equation have been undertaken by employing various form of the nite
difference, pseudo-spectral, and nite element methods (see [23, 27] and references therein).
As is said in [23] Peregrine [25] used the nite difference scheme, which is only rst-order accu-
rate in time and second-order in space. Eilbeck and McGuire [28] gave a second-order difference
method, accurate both in space and time, but it is a three-level scheme and requires another approx-
imation initially. Eilbeck and McGuire [29] and Lewis and Tjon [30] have studied the interaction of
solitary waves for solving RLW equation by using the above three-level nite difference method.
Bhardwaj and Shankar [31] developed a new nite difference scheme based on operator split-
ting and quintic spline interpolation functions technique for the solution of the RLW equation.
Recently, nite element methods based on both quadratic and cubic B-spline or linear space nite
elements within Galerkins method have been used for getting the solutions of the RLW equation
(see [23] and references therein). Most recently, Soliman and Hussien [32] have studied RLW
equation by collocation method with septic splines. It is worth to point out that various numerical
techniques based on nite difference [33], nite element [34], spectral methods [35] and Galerkin
method [36] have been extensively studied [23, 24]. Also several nite elements methods based
on B-splines have been applied to RLW equation [37]. These approaches involve both Galerkin
and collocation methods over nite elements with various degree B-splines [38]. More research
works on the RLW equation can be found in [24, 3960]. Solitary waves of the RLW equation are
discussed in [61]. For further details, the reader refers to Ref. [62] which is an overview of the
theory of solitons and the applications.
This articles presents a new numerical scheme to solve the one-dimensional RLW equation
using the collocation method and approximating directly the solution using radial basis functions.
To avoid solving the nonlinear system, a predictor-corrector scheme is proposed.
The rest of this article is organized as follows: Section III shows that how we use the radial
basis functions to approximate the solution. An implementation of the numerical method to the
problemis presented in Sections IV. In Section Vwe showthat howwe use the predictor-corrector
approach to avoid solving the nonlinear system. To support our ndings, we present results of
numerical experiments in Section VI. Section VII ends this article with a brief conclusion. Finally
some references are introduced at the end.
It is worth to point out that the new method developed in the current paper can be applied to
solve the boundary value problems investigated in [6366].
III. BASIC KNOWLEDGE ABOUT RADIAL BASIS FUNCTIONS APPROXIMATION
In the interpolation of the scattered data using radial basis functions, the approximation of a dis-
tribution u(x), may be written as a linear combination of N radial functions; usually it takes the
following form:
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
810 SHOKRI AND DEHGHAN
TABLE I. Some well-known functions that generate RBFs.
Name of function Denition
Multiquadrics (MQ) (r) =

r
2
+c
2
Inverse Multiquadrics (IMQ) (r) = (

r
2
+c
2
)
1
Thin Plate Splines (TPS) (r) = (1)
k+1
r
2k
log(r)
Gaussian (GA) (r) = exp(cr
2
)
u(x)
N

j=1

j
(r
j
) +(x) for x R
d
, (3.1)
where N is the number of data points, x = (x
1
, x
2
, . . . , x
d
), d is the dimension of the problem, s
are coefcients to be determined, is the radial basis function and r
j
= xx
j
is the Euclidean
norm. Some well-known radial basis functions (RBFs) are listed in Table I.
Equation (3.1) can be written without the additional polynomial . In that case must be
unconditionally positive denite to guarantee the solvability of the resulting system (e.g. Gauss-
ian or inverse multiquadrics). However, is usually required when is conditionally positive
denite, i.e., when has a polynomial growth toward innity. Examples are thin plate splines and
multiquadrics.
For the numerical scheme introduced in Section IV, we will use thin plate splines (TPS). Since
in TPS is C
2k1
continuous, so higher order thin plate splines must be used for higher order
partial differential operators. For the RLW equation, k = 2 is used for thin plate splines (i.e. the
second order thin plate splines).
If P
d
q
denotes the space of d-variate polynomials of order not exceeding q, and letting the poly-
nomials P
1
, . . . , P
m
be the basis of P
d
q
in R
d
, then the polynomial (x), in Eq. (3.1), is usually
written in the following form:
(x) =
m

i=1

i
P
i
(x), (3.2)
where m = (q 1 +d)!/(d!(q 1)!).
To determinate the coefcients (
1
, . . . ,
N
) and (
1
, . . . ,
m
), the collocation method is used.
However, in addition to the N equations resulting from collocating (3.1) at the N points, an extra
m equations are required. This is insured by the m conditions for (3.1),
N

j=1

j
P
i
(x
j
) = 0, i = 1, . . . , m. (3.3)
In a similar representation as (3.1), for any linear partial differential operator L, Lu can be
approximated by
Lu(x)
N

j=1

j
L(r
j
) +L(x). (3.4)
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MESHLESS METHOD FOR RLW EQUATION 811
IV. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NUMERICAL METHOD
The RLW equation in the following form:
U
t
+U
x
+UU
x
U
xxt
= 0, (4.1)
where and are positive parameters and subscripts x and t denote differentiation, is considered
with the boundary conditions U 0 as x . In the equation U shows dimensionless
surface elevation, x distance and t time. To implement the numerical method, the solution domain
is restricted over an interval [a, b]. Boundary conditions
U(a, t ) = U(b, t ) = 0, (4.2)
and the initial condition
U(x, 0) = f (x),
are chosen over the interval [a, b]. f (x) is a localized disturbance inside the interval.
First, let us discretize (4.1) according to the following scheme
U(x, t +t ) U(x, t )
t
+U(x, t ) +U(x, t ).U(x, t )

2
U(x, t +t )
2
U(x, t )
t
= 0,
(4.3)
where is the gradient differential operator, and t is the time step size. Rearranging (4.3), using
the notation u
n
= u(x, t
n
) where t
n
= t
n1
+t , we obtain
u
n+1

2
u
n+1
= u
n

2
u
n
t (u
n
+u
n
u
n
). (4.4)
Assuming that there are a total of (N 2) interpolation points, u
n
(x) can be approximated by
u
n
(x)
N2

j=1

n
j
(r
j
) +
n
N1
x +
n
N
. (4.5)
To determine the interpolation coefcients (
1
,
2
, . . . ,
N1
,
N
), the collocation method is used
by applying (4.5) at every point x
i
, i = 1, 2, . . . , N 2. Thus we have
u
n
(x
i
)
N2

j=1

n
j
(r
ij
) +
n
N1
x
i
+
n
N
, i = 1, 2, . . . , N 2, (4.6)
where r
ij
=
_
(x
i
x
j
)
2
. The additional conditions due to (3.3) are written as
N2

j=1

n
j
=
N2

j=1

n
j
x
j
= 0. (4.7)
Writing (4.6) together with (4.7) in a matrix form we have
[u]
n
= A[]
n
, (4.8)
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
812 SHOKRI AND DEHGHAN
where [u]
n
= [u
n
1
u
n
2
. . . u
n
N2
0 0]
T
, []
n
= [
n
1

n
2
. . .
n
N
]
T
and A = [a
ij
, 1 i, j N] is
given by
A =
_
_
_
_
_
_
_

11

1(N2)
x
1
1
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

(N2)1

(N2)(N2)
x
N2
1
x
1
x
N2
0 0
1 1 0 0
_

_
. (4.9)
There are (N 2) internal (domain) points and two boundary points. Therefore, the (N N)
matrix A can be split into: A = A
d
+A
b
+A
e
, where
A
d
= [a
ij
for (2 i N 3, 1 j N) and 0 elsewhere],
A
b
= [a
ij
for (i = 1, N 2, 1 j N) and 0 elsewhere], (4.10)
A
e
= [ a
ij
for (N 1 i N, 1 j N) and 0 elsewhere].
Using the notation LA to designate the matrix of the same dimension as A and containing the
elements a
ij
, where a
ij
= La
ij
, 1 i, j N, then Eq. (4.4) together with (4.2) can be written,
in the matrix form, as
B[]
n+1
= C[]
n
t {A
d
[]
n
+(A
d
[]
n
) (A
d
[]
n
)}, (4.11)
where
B = A
d

2
A
d
+A
b
+A
e
, C = A
d

2
A
d
.
In Eq. (4.11), the accent means component by component multiplication of two vectors. Equa-
tion (4.11) is obtained by combining (4.4), which applies to the domain points, and (4.2) which
applies to the boundary points.
V. THE PREDICTOR-CORRECTOR SCHEME
To avoid solving the nonlinear system, the following predictor-corrector scheme is proposed. If in
Eq. (4.1), we move the nonlinear termUU
x
to the right-hand side, and eliminate the nonlinearity
and applying the RBF scheme (as we described in previous section), then we have the Eq. (4.11),
that constitutes an N N linear algebraic system in each time level. For simplicity, we write Eq.
(4.11) as the following form
B[]
n+1
= C[]
n
t ([]
n
), (5.1)
where ([]
n
) = A
d
[]
n
+(A
d
[]
n
) (A
d
[]
n
).
At the rst time level, i.e. when n = 0, []
0
is determined using the initial condition. For
dealing with the non-linearity, in each time level (for example n +1), we propose the following
(iterative) algorithm:
Step 1: Calculate an intermediate value []
n+1
(0)
(called the predictor) from (5.1) as follows:
B[]
n+1
(0)
= C[]
n
t ([]
n
). (5.2)
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
MESHLESS METHOD FOR RLW EQUATION 813
Please note that []
n
is known from the previous time level. By using the predicted value we
get the approximation
B[]
n+1
(1)
= C[]
n

t
2
_
([]
n
) +
_
[]
n+1
0
__
. (5.3)
Step 2: The general iteration is given by
B[]
n+1
(k)
= C[]
n

t
2
_
([]
n
) +
_
[]
n+1
k1
__
, k = 1, 2, . . . (5.4)
Step 3: We compute the left-hand side of (5.4) until
_
_
U
n+1
(k)
U
n+1
(k1)
_
_

_
_
U
n+1
(k)
_
_

for prescribed tolerance . (5.5)


Once the prescribed convergence is achieved, we can move on to the following time level. This
process is iterated, until reaching to the desirable time t .
VI. NUMERICAL RESULTS
In this section, we give some computational results of the thin plate spline radial basis function
method with predictor-corrector (PC-TPS-RBF) on the RLW equation to support our discussion
in the previous sections. Accuracy of the estimated solutions can be worked out by measuring
both the L
2
and L

error norms which are dened by


L
2
=
_
_
U
exact
U
numerical
_
_
2
=

_
x
N

i=1
_
U
exact
i
U
numerical
i
_
2
, (6.1)
L

=
_
_
U
exact
U
numerical
_
_

= max
i

U
exact
i
U
numerical
i

. (6.2)
Note that in this section we follow a procedure which is already employed in the literature
[23, 24] to interpret the numerical results. With our best of knowledge, this is the rst time that
the method of radial basis functions is proposed to solve the regularized long wave equation.
Conservation property of the RLW equation will be validated by computing quantities
corresponding to mass, momentum and energy [67]
C
1
=
_
b
a
Udx x
N

i=1
U
i
,
C
2
=
_
b
a
_
U
2
+(U
x
)
2
_
dx x
N

i=1
_
(U
i
)
2
+((U
x
)
i
)
2
_
, (6.3)
C
3
=
_
b
a
_
U
3
+3U
2
_
dx x
N

i=1
_
(U
i
)
3
+3(U
i
)
2
_
,
respectively. Then the algorithm is said to be signicant and useful. It can be seen from Eq. (6.3)
that integrals are approximated by employing the trapezium rule.
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
814 SHOKRI AND DEHGHAN
TABLE II. Error norms and invariants for propagation of a solitary wave: amplitude 3c = 0.3, t = 0.1,
and x = 0.125.
Method Time L
2
10
5
L

10
5
C
1
C
2
C
3
PC-TPS-RBF 0 0 0 3.9799497 0.8104624 2.5790074
5 6.0324 2.4618 3.9799497 0.8104624 2.5790074
10 11.852 4.8501 3.9799497 0.8104624 2.5790074
15 17.343 6.9527 3.9799497 0.8104625 2.5790074
20 22.483 8.8006 3.9799497 0.8104625 2.5790074
PC-TPS-RBF (t = 0.01) 20 0.2526 0.1010 3.9799497 0.8104624 2.5790074
PC-TPS-RBF (t = 0.001) 20 0.0351 0.0139 3.9799498 0.8104624 2.5790074
High-order compact 20 0.0395 0.0155 3.9799067 0.8104625 2.5790074
Galerkin linear 20 51.1 19.8 3.98206 0.81164 2.58133
Galerkin quadratic 20 22.0 8.6 3.97989 0.810467 2.57902
Least square cubic 20 1.84 156.64 3.961597 0.804185 2.558292
Petrov-Galerkin quadratic 20 22.7 8.1 3.91986 0.810399 2.57880
Pseudo-spectral 20 18.2 6.66 3.97992 0.810462 2.57901
Cubic B-spline collocation 20 30 11.6 3.979883 0.8102762 2.5783926
We would like to mention that we employ ve test problems to demonstrate the efciency
of the new method developed in the current paper. These test problems include: motion of the
solitary wave, interaction of two positive solitary waves, interaction of a positive and a negative
solitary wave, the evaluation of Maxwellian pulse into stable solitary waves, the development of
an undular bore.
A. Motion of the Solitary Wave
Choosing examples with known solutions allows for a more complete error analysis. In this exam-
ple, we consider the types of solitary wave solutions to the RLWequation were extensively studied
by many authors (for example, see [23, 27, 32]).
The theoretical solution [27]
U(x, t ) = 3c sech
2
(k[x x
0
(1 +c)t ]), (6.4)
represents a single solitary wave of amplitude 3c, = 1 + c is the wave velocity and
k =

c/4(1 +c).
The initial condition
U(x, 0) = 3c sech
2
(k[x x
0
]), (6.5)
and the boundary conditions
U(a, t ) = U(b, t ) = 0, (6.6)
are used with parameters c = 0.1 and c = 0.03, x
0
= 0 and = = 1. This initial solitary wave
propagates to the right across the interval 80 x 100 in the time period 0 t 20 [23].
To compare the new technique with the recent methods collected in [23], the spatial grid spac-
ing x = 0.125 and time step t = 0.1 are taken. Errors in L
2
and L

norms and the three


invariants C
1
, C
2
, C
3
for the two cases taken at several times are tabulated in Tables II and III,
respectively. The plot of estimated solution in different times and distributions of the errors at
t = 20 for amplitudes 0.3 and 0.09 are shown in Figs. 1 and 2, respectively.
Also note that the new method developed in this paper is denoted by PC-TPS-RBF.
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
MESHLESS METHOD FOR RLW EQUATION 815
TABLE III. Error norms and invariants for propagation of a solitary wave: amplitude 3c = 0.09, t = 0.1,
and x = 0.125.
Method Time L
2
10
5
L

10
5
C
1
C
2
C
3
PC-TPS-RBF 0 0 0 2.1094049 0.1273017 0.3888059
5 0.3632 0.1061 2.1094049 0.1273017 0.3888059
10 0.7216 0.2157 2.1094046 0.1273017 0.3888059
15 1.0788 0.3269 2.1094043 0.1273017 0.3888059
20 1.4342 0.4382 2.1094022 0.1273017 0.3888059
PC-TPS-RBF (t = 0.01) 20 0.0632 0.0469 2.1094022 0.1273017 0.3888059
PC-TPS-RBF (t = 0.001) 20 0.0614 0.0469 2.1094025 0.1273017 0.3888061
High-order compact 20 0.3457 0.1497 2.1067778 0.1273012 0.3888043
Galerkin linear 20 53.5 19.8 2.10906 0.127305 0.388815
Galerkin quadratic 20 56.3 43.2 2.10460 0.127302 0.388803
Least square cubic 20 2.81 155.06 2.128869 0.1272228 0.388571
Petrov-Galerkin quadratic 20 53.7 31.6 2.10908 0.127318 0.388854
Pseudo-spectral 20 1.34 0.392 2.109405 0.127302 0.388806
Cubic B-spline collocation 20 57 43.2 2.104584 0.1272937 0.388778
The L
2
and L

error norms for the simulations are computed to be L


2
= 2.2483 10
5
and
L

= 8.800610
5
(t = 0.1) and L
2
= 0.035110
5
and L

= 0.013910
5
(t = 0.001)
for amplitude 0.3 at time t = 20. For amplitude 0.09 at time t = 20 we have L
2
= 0.4382 10
5
and L

= 1.4342 10
5
(t = 0.1) and L
2
= 0.0469 10
5
and L

= 0.0614 10
5
(t = 0.001). It can be observed from Tables II and III that L
2
and L

error norms calculated


with the present PC-TPS-RBF method are less than those of other schemes considered herein
from [23].
On the other hand, we can see from Tables II and III that there are only small changes in the
three invariants; quantities C
1
, C
2
, and C
3
for amplitude 0.3 change from their initial values by
less than 1 10
7
, 2 10
7
, and 1 10
7
, respectively, during the simulation, and quantities C
1
,
C
2
, and C
3
for amplitude 0.09 change from their initial values by less than 3 10
6
, 1 10
7
,
and 1 10
7
, respectively. Hence, it can be mentioned that the conservation quantities remains
constant during the simulation [27].
FIG. 1. (Left) plot of estimated solution in different times, (right) error=exact-numerical solution at time
t = 20, for solitary wave with amplitude 3c = 0.3 and t = 0.01. [Color gure can be viewed in the online
issue, which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.]
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
816 SHOKRI AND DEHGHAN
FIG. 2. (Left) plot of estimated solution in different times, (right) error=exact-numerical solution at time
t = 20, for solitary wave with amplitude 3c = 0.09 and t = 0.01. [Color gure can be viewed in the online
issue, which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.]
B. Interaction of Two Positive Solitary Waves
In this part, the interaction of two positive solitary waves is also investigated using the initial
condition [23]
U(x, 0) =
2

j=1
3c
j
sech
2
(k
j
(x x
j
)), (6.7)
where c
j
= 4k
2
j
/(1 4k
2
j
) and the boundary conditions are
U(a, t ) = U(b, t ) = 0. (6.8)
The test was run from t = 0 to 25 in the region 0 x 120. The parameters used are k
1
= 0.4,
k
2
= 0.3, x
1
= 15, x
2
= 35, x = 0.2, t = 0.01, and = = 1. The plot of approxi-
mated solution in different times is demonstrated in Fig. 3, in which the two solitary waves have
FIG. 3. Plot of the estimated solution in different times for the interaction of two positive solitary waves.
[Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.]
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
MESHLESS METHOD FOR RLW EQUATION 817
TABLE IV. Invariants for the interaction of two positive solitary waves.
Time C
1
C
2
C
3
0 37.916515 120.52323 744.08120
5 37.916622 120.52325 744.08131
10 37.916632 120.52389 744.08442
15 37.916647 120.52533 744.09037
20 37.916655 120.52310 744.07960
25 37.916663 120.52297 744.07896
apparently passed through one another and emerged unchanged by the encounter. In Table IV,
we show the values of the three invariants for various times throughout the numerical simula-
tion. One can observe that quantities C
1
, C
2
, and C
3
change from their initial values by less than
2 10
4
(0.0004%), 3 10
3
(0.002%), and 0.01(0.002%), respectively, during the simulation
[23]. It is worth to mention that the solution is conformity with the previous results obtained by
several authors [23, 24, 27, 32].
C. Interaction of a Positive and a Negative Solitary Wave
Author of [68], simulated the interaction of a positive and a negative solitary wave and found the
collision to produce additional solitary waves an observation observed by Lewis and Tjon [30].
Also Gardner and Gardner [69], Soliman and Hussien [32] and Lin et al. [23] have investigated
this problem.
The initial condition is given as Eq. (6.7), U = 0 is used at the both region ends and the
experiment was run from t = 0 to 20 in the region 10 x 80. The concerning parameters
are k
1
= 0.4, k
2
= 0.6, x
1
= 23, x
2
= 38, x = 0.2, t = 0.1, and = = 1. The proles
which are sometime after the interaction, are demonstrated in Fig. 4, which show details of the
structure of these solitary waves at time t = 2 and 20, respectively. The three invariants of motion
for various times steps are given in Table V.
FIG. 4. Santarelli experiment: (left) wave prole at time t = 2, (right) wave prole at time t = 20.
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
818 SHOKRI AND DEHGHAN
TABLE V. Invariants for the interaction of a positive and a negative solitary wave.
Time C
1
C
2
C
3
0 6.0606060 382.85217 350.87781
4 6.0605980 382.31084 355.91071
8 6.0606191 383.18845 351.20101
12 6.0606202 383.18121 351.49509
16 6.0606288 383.16353 351.53050
20 6.0722598 383.16563 351.52559
D. The Evaluation of Maxwellian Pulse into Stable Solitary Waves
Again we follow [23] and as an important initial value problem for the RLW equation we inves-
tigate the evolution of the Maxwellian pulse into stable solitary waves [23, 24, 32]. We simulate
the test for various values of the parameter . Note that the initial condition is
U(x, 0) = exp[(x 7)
2
], (6.9)
and the following boundary conditions are used:
U(a, t ) = U(b, t ) = 0. (6.10)
In this test, calculations are carried out with = 1 and = 0.04, 0.01, and 0.001 when nal
time is t = 9, 12, and 25, respectively. The spatial region is 0 x 60 for = 0.001 and
0 x 30 for = 0.04, 0.01. For = 0.04 the Maxwellian pulse develops into a single
solitary wave, plus a well developed oscillating tail as graphed in Fig. 5. When = 0.01 and
0.001, the Maxwellian pulse develops into three and nine solitary waves as demonstrated in Figs.
6 and 7, respectively. One can observe from Figs. 57 that the numerical results calculated with
the PC-TPS-RBF method are consistent with Gardner and Gardner [69], Soliman and Hussien
[32] and Lin et al. [23]. It thus seems that the initial Maxwellian pulse breaks up into a train
of solitary waves, the number depending on the value of . In Tables VIVIII, we demonstrate
the three invariants at various time steps. It is worth to point out that the conservation laws are
changed in the ranges which are acceptable.
FIG. 5. (Left) plot of the estimated solution in different times and (right) wave prole at time t = 9 for
Maxwellian pulse into stable solitary waves for = 0.04. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue,
which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.]
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
MESHLESS METHOD FOR RLW EQUATION 819
FIG. 6. (Left) plot of the estimated solution in different times and (right) wave prole at time t = 12 for
Maxwellian pulse into stable solitary waves for = 0.01. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue,
which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.]
FIG. 7. (Left) plot of the estimated solution in different times and (right) wave prole at time t = 25 for
Maxwellian pulse into stable solitary waves for = 0.001. [Color gure can be viewed in the online issue,
which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.]
E. The Development of an Undular Bore
As the last experiment in this section we investigate the development of an undular bore which
has been proposed by [23, 27] and employ the initial condition
U(x, 0) = 0.5U
0
_
1 tanh
_
x x
c
d
__
, (6.11)
TABLE VI. Invariants for evaluation of Maxwellian pulse into stable solitary waves when = 0.04.
Time C
1
C
2
C
3
0 1.7724538 1.3034453 4.7832691
2 1.7724498 1.3034089 4.7833756
4 1.7724465 1.3034079 4.7833782
6 1.7724449 1.3034087 4.7833766
8 1.7724440 1.3034089 4.7833759
9 1.7724437 1.3034089 4.7833758
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
820 SHOKRI AND DEHGHAN
TABLE VII. Invariants for evaluation of Maxwellian pulse into stable solitary waves when = 0.01.
Time C
1
C
2
C
3
0 1.7724538 1.2658469 4.7832691
2 1.7724470 1.2658612 4.7865530
4 1.7724438 1.2659215 4.7905124
6 1.7724421 1.2659167 4.7909630
8 1.7724412 1.2658969 4.7908273
10 1.7724407 1.2659222 4.7911175
12 1.7724396 1.2659295 4.7912048
TABLE VIII. Invariants for evaluation of Maxwellian pulse into stable solitary waves when = 0.001.
Time C
1
C
2
C
3
0 1.7724538 1.2545674 4.7832691
4 1.7724711 1.2748805 4.9639620
8 1.7728050 1.2682085 4.9053199
12 1.7727235 1.2677298 4.9004660
16 1.7726554 1.2745380 4.9597341
20 1.7725723 1.2816287 5.0218601
25 1.7723998 1.2721862 4.9376577
FIG. 8. Initial and undulation proles with d = 5 at various times.
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
MESHLESS METHOD FOR RLW EQUATION 821
FIG. 9. Initial and undulation proles with d = 2 at various times.
and boundary conditions
U(a, t ) = U
0
, U(b, t ) = 0, (6.12)
where magnitude U(x, 0) gives the amount of the change in the water level. The change in water
level of magnitude U
0
is centered on x = x
c
, and d represents the slope between the still water
and deeper water. In order to make comparison with earlier investigations, we take the parameters
to have the following values: = 1.5, = 1/6, U
0
= 0.1 and x
c
= 0. We set the experimental
region of 60 x 300 together with x = 0.5, t = 0.1 and run the simulation up to nal
time t = 250.
As the simulation proceeds undulations begin to develop and grow, moving back along the
prole as the leading edge moves to the right. Initial and undulation proles with d = 5 and
d = 2 at various times are drawn in Figs. 8 and 9 respectively. The computational results are
consistent with the results produced by [23, 27]. To see the effect of the initial undulation, view
of the formation of the leading undulation for both cases the gentle slope and the steep slope are
demonstrated (see Fig. 10 in which the maximum u is drawn against the time t ). It worth to point
out that the results obtained conrm the observations of the earlier researchers.
Numerical Methods for Partial Differential Equations DOI 10.1002/num
822 SHOKRI AND DEHGHAN
FIG. 10. The rst undulation: (a) gentle slope d = 5 and (b) steep slope d = 2. [Color gure can be viewed
in the online issue, which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com.]
VII. CONCLUSION
In this article, we presented a numerical simulation of the RLW equation using collocation and
approximating the solution by radial basis functions (RBFs). To avoid solving the nonlinear
system, a predictor-corrector scheme is proposed. The method is tested on the problems of prop-
agation of a solitary wave, interaction of two positive solitary waves, interaction of a positive and
a negative solitary wave, the evaluation of Maxwellian pulse into stable solitary waves and the
development of an undular bore. In the simulation of the propagation of a solitary wave, high
accuracy was achieved by comparing the numerical solutions with the exact ones in terms of the
L
2
and L

error norms, and comparison was made with recently methods collected in [23, 24].
Other experiments are modeled well and the results obtained agree well with earlier works. The
three invariants of motion are satisfactorily constant in all the simulations described here, so the
algorithm can fairly be described as conservation.
The authors are very thankful to the three referees of this paper.
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