Fractional bernstein series solution of fractional diffusion equations with error estimate

Abstract

In the present paper, we introduce the fractional Bernstein series solution (FBSS) to solve the fractional diffusion equation, which is a generalization of the classical diffusion equation. The Bernstein polynomial method is a promising one and can be generalized to more complicated problems in fractional partial differential equations. To get the FBSS, we first convert all terms in the problem to matrix forms. Then, the fundamental matrix equation is obtained and thus, the solution is obtained. Two error estimation methods based on a residual correction procedure and the consecutive approximations are incorporated to find the estimate and bound of the absolute error. The perturbation and stability analysis of the method is given. We apply the method to some illustrative examples. The numerical results are compared with the exact solutions and known second-order methods. The outcomes of the numerical examples are very encouraging and show that the FBSS is highly useful in solving fractional partial problems. The results show the accuracy and effectiveness of the method