Traveling wave analysis of partial differential equations

*Partial differential equations* (PDEs) have been developed and used in science and engineering for more than 200 years, yet they remain a very active area of research because of both their role in mathematics and their application to virtually all areas of science and engineering. This research has been spurred by the relatively recent development of computer solution methods for PDEs. These have extended PDE applications such that we can now quantify broad areas of physical, chemical, and biological phenomena. The current development of PDE solution methods is an active area of research that has benefited greatly from advances in computer hardware and software, and the growing interest in addressing PDE models of increasing complexity.

A large class of models now being actively studied are of a type and complexity such that their solutions are usually beyond traditional mathematical analysis. Consequently, numerical methods have to be employed. These numerical methods, some of which are still being developed, require testing and validation. This is often achieved by studying PDEs that have known exact analytical solutions. The development of analytical solutions is also an active area of research, with many advances being reported recently, particularly for systems described by nonlinear PDEs. Thus, the development of analytical solutions directly supports the development of numerical methods by providing a spectrum of test problems that can be used to evaluate numerical methods.

This book surveys some of these new developments in analytical and numerical methods and is aimed at senior undergraduates, postgraduates, and professionals in the fields of engineering, mathematics, and the sciences. It relates these new developments through the exposition of a series of *traveling wave* solutions to complex PDE problems. The PDEs that have been selected are largely named in the sense that they are generally closely linked to their original contributors. These names usually reflect the fact that the PDEs are widely recognized and are of fundamental importance to the understanding of many application areas.

In summary the major focus of this book is the numerical MOL solution of PDEs and the testing of numerical methods with analytical solutions, through a series of applications. The origin of the analytical solutions through traveling wave and residual function analysis provides a framework for the development of analytical solutions to nonlinear PDEs that are now widely reported in the literature. Also in selected chapters, procedures based on the tanh, exp, and Ricatti methods that have recently received major attention are used to illustrate the derivation of analytical solutions. References are provided where appropriate to additional information on the techniques and methods deployed.