Collocation based approximations for a class of fractional boundary value problems

Abstract

A boundary value problem for fractional integro-differential equations with weakly singular kernels is considered. The problem is reformulated as an integral equation of the second kind with respect to, the Caputo fractional derivative of y of order α, with 1 < α < 2, where y is the solution of the original problem. Using this reformulation, the regularity properties of both y and its Caputo derivative z are studied. Based on this information a piecewise polynomial collocation method is developed for finding an approximate solution zN of the reformulated problem. Using zN, an approximation yN for y is constructed and a detailed convergence analysis of the proposed method is given. In particular, the attainable order of convergence of the proposed method for appropriate values of grid and collocation parameters is established. To illustrate the performance of our approach, results of some numerical experiments are presented.

Keywords

• fractional weakly singular integro-differential equation
• Caputo derivative
• boundary value problem
• collocation method
• graded grid