Project 1
Rakhi Bala Roy
April 2025
1 Introduction
A very wide range of physical processes lead to wave motion, where signals are propagated through a
medium in space and time,normally with the tittle or no permanent movement of the medium itself. The
shape of the signals may undergo changes as they travel through matter,but usually not so much that
the signals cannot be recognized at some later point in space and time.Many types of wave motion can
be described by the equation utt = ∇.(c2 ∇u) + f , which we will solve in the forthcoming text by finite
difference methods [1].
1.1 Simulation of waves on a string
We begin our study of wave equations by simulating one-dimensional waves on a string, say on a guitar
or violin. Let the string in the deformed state coincide with the interval [0,L] on the x axis, and let
u(x,t) be the displacement at time t in the y direction of a point initially at x. The displacement function
u is governed by the mathematical model
∂2u ∂2u
2
= c2 2 x ∈ (0, L), t ∈ (0, T ] (1)
∂t ∂x
u(x, 0) = I(x), x ∈ [0, L] (2)
∂
u(x, 0) = 0, x ∈ [0, L] (3)
∂t
u(0, t) = 0, t ∈ (0, T ] (4)
u(L, t) = 0, t ∈ (0, T ] (5)
The constant c and the function I(x) must be prescribed.
Equation (1) is known as the one-dimensional wave equation. Since this PDE contains a second-order
derivative in time, we need two initial conditions. The condition (2) specifies the initial shape of the
string, I(x), and (3) expresses that the initial velocity of the string is zero. In addition, PDEs need
boundary conditions, given here as (4) and (5). These two conditions specify that the string is fixed at
the ends, i.e.,that the displacement u is zero. The solution u(x,t) varies in space and time and describes
waves that move with velocity c to the left and right. Sometimes we will use a more compact notation
for the partial derivatives to save space;
∂2u
ut = ∂u
∂t , utt = ∂t2 ,
and similar expressions for derivatives with respect to other variables. Then the wave equation can
be written compactly as utt = c2 uxx .
The PDE problem (1)-(5) will now be discretized in space and time by a finite difference method.
24
Example 1. We take λ1 = λ2 = 1, T = 1, f (t) = 12t2 + r(5−α) t4 − α
The exact solution of Example 1 is u(t) = t4 . In our computation, we use the difference scheme to solve
this problem. The numerical error was computed by
E∞ (τ ) = max0≤n≤N |u(tn ) − un
E∞ (τ )
and the corresponding convergence order was calculated by Order=log2 E∞ ( τ2 ) .
We chose α = 1.3, 1.5, 1.7, respectively, to rest the convergence accuracy.
1
Table 1 shows the numerical errors and the corresponding convergence accuracy for each fixed α. As
expected, our scheme generates the numerical approximation accuracy with Q(τ 3−α ).
Table 1.
Students Name Roll Numbers Reg. No.
Rakhi Bala Roy 16 1825
Table 1: Numerical approximation error and convergence accuracy in Example 1.
References
[1] Manruo Cui, Cui-Cui Ji, and Weizhong Dai. A finite difference method for solving the wave equation
with fractional damping. Mathematical and Computational Applications, 29(1), 2024.
