The Hunter-Saxton Equation: A Numerical Approach Using Collocation Method

Abstract

In this study, we are going to present an overview on the Hunter-Saxton equation which is a famous equation modelling waves in a massive director field of a nematic liquid crystal. The collocation finite element method is based on quintic B-spline basis for obtaining numerical solutions of the equation. Using this method, after discretization, solution of the equation expressed as linear combination of shape functions and B-spline basis. So, Hunter-Saxton equation converted to nonlinear ordinary differential equation system. With the aid of the error norms L-2 and L-infinity, some comparisons are presented between numeric and exact solutions for different step sizes. As a result, the authors observed that the method is a powerful, suitable and reliable numerical method for solving various kind of partial differential equations.