A higher order difference method for singularly perturbed parabolic partial differential equations

This paper studies a higher order numerical method for the singularly perturbed parabolic convection-diffusion problems where the diffusion term is multiplied by a small perturbation parameter. In general, the solutions of these type of problems have a boundary layer. Here, we generate a spatial adaptive mesh based on the equidistribution of a positive monitor function. Implicit Euler method is used to discretize the time variable and an upwind scheme is considered in space direction. A higher order convergent solution with respect to space and time is obtained using the postprocessing based extrapolation approach. It is observed that the convergence is independent of perturbation parameter. This technique enhances the order of accuracy from first order uniform convergence to second order uniform convergence in space as well as in time. Comparative study with the existed meshes show the highly effective behavior of the present method.