Zurab Vashakidze
abstract:
In the present work, the classical nonlinear Kirchhoff string equation is 
considered. A three-layer symmetrical semi-discrete scheme with respect to the 
temporal variable is applied for finding an approximate solution to the 
initial-boundary value problem for this equation, in which the value of the 
gradient of a non-linear term is taken at the middle point. This approach is 
essential because the inversion of the linear operator is sufficient for 
computations of approximate solutions for each temporal step. The variation 
method is applied to the spatial variable. Differences of the Legendre 
polynomials are used as coordinate functions. This choice of Legendre 
polynomials is also important for numerical realization. This way makes it 
possible to get a system whose structure does not essentially differ from the 
corresponding system of difference equations allowing us to use the methods 
developed for solving a system of difference equations. An application of the 
suggested variational-difference scheme for the numerical treatment of the 
stated nonlinear problem gives us an opportunity to solve the system of linear 
equations instead of a nonlinear one. It is proved that a matrix of the system 
of Galerkin's linear equations is positively defined and the stability of the 
factorization method is established.
The program of the numerical implementation with the corresponding interface is 
created based on the suggested algorithm, and numerical computations are carried 
out for the model problems.
Mathematics Subject Classification: 65F05, 65F50, 65M06, 65M60, 65N12, 65N22, 65Q30
Key words and phrases: Non-linear Kirchhoff string equation, Cauchy problem, three-layer semi-discrete scheme, Galerkin method, Cholesky decomposition