A symmetric version of regularized long wave equation (SRLWE),

has been proposed to model the propagation of weakly nonlinear ion acoustic and space charge waves [1]. The solitary wave solutions are

The four invariants and some numerical results have been obtained in [1], where is the velocity, . Obviously, eliminating from (1.1), we get a class of SRLWE:

Equation (1.3) is explicitly symmetric in the and derivatives and is very similar to the regularized long wave equation that describes shallow water waves and plasma drift waves [2, 3]. The SRLW equation also arises in many other areas of mathematical physics [4–6]. Numerical investigation indicates that interactions of solitary waves are inelastic [7]; thus, the solitary wave of the SRLWE is not a solution. Research on the wellposedness for its solution and numerical methods has aroused more and more interest. In [8], Guo studied the existence, uniqueness, and regularity of the numerical solutions for the periodic initial value problem of generalized SRLW by the spectral method. In [9], Zheng et al. presented a Fourier pseudospectral method with a restraint operator for the SRLWEs and proved its stability and obtained the optimum error estimates. There are other methods such as pseudospectral method, finite difference method for the initial-boundary value problem of SRLWEs (see [9–15]).

In applications, the viscous damping effect is inevitable, and it plays the same important role as the dispersive effect. Therefore, it is more significant to study the dissipative symmetric regularized long wave equations with the damping term

where are positive constants, is the dissipative coefficient, and is the damping coefficient. Equations (1.4)-(1.5) are a reasonable model to render essential phenomena of nonlinear ion acoustic wave motion when dissipation is considered. Existence, uniqueness, and wellposedness of global solutions to (1.4)-(1.5) are presented (see [16–20]). But it is difficult to find the analytical solution to (1.4)-(1.5), which makes numerical solution important.

To authors' knowledge, the finite difference method to dissipative SRLWEs with damping term (1.4)-(1.5) has not been studied till now. In this paper, we propose linear three level implicit finite difference scheme for (1.4)-(1.5) with

and the boundary conditions

We show that this difference scheme is uniquely solvable, convergent, and stable in both theoretical and numerical senses.

Lemma 1.1.

Suppose that , , the solution of (1.4)–(1.7) satisfies , , , and , where is a generic positive constant that varies in the context.

Proof.

Let

Multiplying (1.4) by and integrating over , we have

According to

we get

Then, multiplying (1.5) by and integrating over , we have

By

we get

Adding (1.14) to (1.11), we obtain

So is decreasing with respect to , which implies that , . Then, it indicates that , , and . It is followed from Sobolev inequality that .

Let and be the uniform step size in the spatial and temporal direction, respectively. Denote , , , , , and . We define the difference operators as follows:

Then, the average three-implicit finite difference scheme for the solution of (1.4)–(1.7) is as follow:

Lemma 2.1.

Summation by parts follows [12, 21] that for any two discrete functions

Lemma 2.2 (discrete Sobolev's inequality [12, 21]).

There exist two constants and such that

Lemma 2.3 (discrete Gronwall inequality [12, 21]).

Suppose that , are nonnegative functions and is nondecreasing. If and

Then .

Theorem 2.4.

If , , then the solution of (2.2)–(2.5) satisfies

Proof.

Taking an inner product of (2.2) with   (i.e., ) and considering the boundary condition (2.5) and Lemma 2.1, we obtain

where . Since

we obtain

Taking an inner product of (2.3) with  (i.e., ), we obtain

Adding (2.12) to (2.13), we have

Since

Equation (2.14) can be changed to

Let , and (2.16) is changed to

If is sufficiently small which satisfies , then

Summing up (2.18) from 1 to , we have

From Lemma 2.3, we obtain , which implies that, , , and . By Lemma 2.2, we obtain .

Theorem 2.5.

Assume that , , the solution of difference scheme (2.2)–(2.5) satisfies:

Proof.

Differentiating backward (2.2)–(2.5) with respect to , we obtain

Computing the inner product of (2.21) with   (i.e., ) and considering (2.24) and Lemma 2.1, we obtain

where . It follows from Theorem 2.4 that

By the Schwarz inequality and Lemma 2.1, we get

Noting that

it follows from (2.25) that

Computing the inner product of (2.22) with (i.e., ) and considering (2.24) and Lemma 2.1, we obtain

Since

then (2.30) is changed to

Adding (2.29) to (2.32), we have

Leting , we obtain . Choosing suitable which is small enough to satisfy , we get

Summing up (2.34) from 1 to , we have

By Lemma 2.3, we get , which implies that , . It follows from Theorem 2.4 and Lemma 2.2 that , .

Theorem 3.1.

The solution of (2.2)–(2.5) is unique.

Proof.

Using the mathematical induction, clearly, , are uniquely determined by initial conditions (2.4). then select appropriate second-order methods (such as the C-N Schemes) and calculate and (i.e. , , and , are uniquely determined). Assume that and are the only solution, now consider and in (2.2) and (2.3):

Taking an inner product of (3.1) with , we have

Since

then it holds

Taking an inner product of (3.2) with and adding to (3.5), we have

which implies that (3.1)-(3.2) have only zero solution. So the solution and of (2.2)–(2.5) is unique.

Let and be the solution of problem (1.4)–(1.7); that is, , , then the truncation of the difference scheme (2.2)–(2.5) is

Making use of Taylor expansion, it holds if .

Theorem 4.1.

Assume that , , then the solution and in the senses of norms and , respectively, to the difference scheme (2.2)–(2.5) converges to the solution of problem (1.4)–(1.7) and the order of convergence is .

Proof.

Subtracting (2.2) from (4.1) subtracting (2.3) from (4.2), and letting , , we have

where

Computing the inner product of (4.3) with , we get

According to

it follow from Lemma 1.1, Theorems 2.4, and 2.5 that

By the Schwarz inequality, we obtain

Since

it follows from (4.9)–(4.10) and (4.6) that

Computing the inner product of (4.4) with , we obtain

Adding (4.12) to (4.11), we have

Leting

we get

If is sufficiently small which satisfies , then

Summing up (4.16) from 1 to , we have

Select appropriate second-order methods (such as the C-N Schemes), and calculate and , which satisfies

Noticing that

we then have

By Lemma 2.3, we get

This yields

By Lemma 2.2, we have

Similarly to Theorem 4.1, we can prove the result as follows.

Theorem 4.2.

Under the conditions of Theorem 4.1, the solution and of (2.2)–(2.5) is stable in the senses of norm and , respectively.

Since the three-implicit finite difference scheme can not start by itself, we need to select other two-level schemes (such as the C-N Scheme) to get , . Then, reusing initial value , , we can work out . Iterative numerical calculation is not required, for this scheme is linear, so it saves computing time.

When , the damping does not have an effect and the dissipative will not appear. So the initial conditions of (1.4)–(1.7) are same as those of (1.1):

Let , , , and . Since we do not know the exact solution of (1.4)-(1.5), an error estimates method in [21] is used: a comparison between the numerical solutions on a coarse mesh and those on a refine mesh is made. We consider the solution on mesh as the reference solution. In Table 1, we give the ratios in the sense of at various time steps.