Boundary element solution of the two-dimensional sine-Gordon equation using continuous linear elements

This article studies the boundary element solution of two-dimensional sine-Gordon (SG) equation using continuous linear elements approximation. Non-linear and in-homogenous terms are converted to the boundary by the dual reciprocity method and a predictor–corrector scheme is employed to eliminate the non-linearity. The procedure developed in this paper, is applied to various problems involving line and ring solitons where considered in references [Argyris J, Haase M, Heinrich JC. Finite element approximation to two-dimensional sine-Gordon solitons. Comput Methods Appl Mech Eng 1991;86:1–26; Bratsos AG. An explicit numerical scheme for the sine-Gordon equation in 2+1 dimensions. Appl Numer Anal Comput Math 2005;2(2):189–211, Bratsos AG. A modified predictor–corrector scheme for the two-dimensional sine-Gordon equation. Numer Algorithms 2006;43:295–308; Bratsos AG. The solution of the two-dimensional sine-Gordon equation using the method of lines. J Comput Appl Math 2007;206:251–77; Bratsos AG. A third order numerical scheme for the two-dimensional sine-Gordon equation. Math Comput Simul 2007;76:271–8; Christiansen PL, Lomdahl PS. Numerical solutions of 2+1 dimensional sine-Gordon solitons. Physica D: Nonlinear Phenom 1981;2(3):482–94; Djidjeli K, Price WG, Twizell EH. Numerical solutions of a damped sine-Gordon equation in two space variables. J Eng Math 1995;29:347–69; Dehghan M, Mirzaei D. The dual reciprocity boundary element method (DRBEM) for two-dimensional sine-Gordon equation. Comput Methods Appl Mech Eng 2008;197:476–86]. Using continuous linear elements approximation produces more accurate results than constant ones. By using this approach all cases associated to SG equation, which exist in literature, are investigated.