L1‐type finite element method for time‐fractional diffusion‐wave equations on nonuniform grids

Abstract As is well known, one of the main challenges in dealing with the time‐fractional diffusion‐wave equation is that the solutions have weak regularity at the initial values. This necessitates the use of nonuniform grids for error analysis. However, the theoretical analysis of nonuniform grids is relatively complex and lacks efficient and stable numerical methods. The main research problem addressed in this article is the time‐fractional diffusion‐wave equation on nonuniform grids. We use the order reduction method and discrete complementary convolution kernel to discretize the Caputo derivative of the equation and obtain the L1‐type finite element method on nonuniform grids. The properties related to discrete complementary convolutional kernels are often used for algorithm convergence analysis, which simplifies the process of finite element theory analysis and is efficient and innovative. This article demonstrates the solvability, stability, and convergence of the L1‐type finite element schemes on nonuniform grids. Finally, the consistency between the proposed finite element scheme and the convergence order results obtained from theoretical analysis was verified through experiments.