Homotopy method of fundamental solutions for solving certain nonlinear partial differential equations

In this study, the homotopy analysis method (HAM) is combined with the method of fundamental solutions (MFS) and the augmented polyharmonic spline (APS) to solve certain nonlinear partial differential equations (PDE). The method of fundamental solutions with high-order augmented polyharmonic spline (MFS-APS) is a very accurate meshless numerical method which is capable of solving inhomogeneous PDEs if the fundamental solution and the analytical particular solutions of the APS associated with the considered operator are known. In the solution procedure, the HAM is applied to convert the considered nonlinear PDEs into a hierarchy of linear inhomogeneous PDEs, which can be sequentially solved by the MFS-APS. In order to solve strongly nonlinear problems, two auxiliary parameters are introduced to ensure the convergence of the HAM. Therefore, the homotopy method of fundamental solutions can be applied to solve problems of strongly nonlinear PDEs, including even those whose governing equation and boundary conditions do not contain any linear terms. Therefore, it can greatly enlarge the application areas of the MFS. Several numerical experiments were carried out to validate the proposed method. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.