Two standard and two nonstandard finite difference schemes are constructed to solve a basic reaction–diffusion–chemotaxis model, for which no exact solution is known. The continuous model involves a system of nonlinear coupled partial differential equations subject to some specified initial and boundary conditions. It is not possible to obtain theoretically the stability region of the two standard finite difference schemes. Through running some numerical experiments, we deduce heuristically that these classical methods give reasonable solutions when the temporal step size k k is chosen such that k ≤ 0.25 k\le 0.25 with the spatial step size h h fixed at h = 1.0 h=1.0 (first novelty of this work). We observe that the standard finite difference schemes are not always positivity preserving, and this is why we consider nonstandard finite difference schemes. Two nonstandard methods abbreviated as NSFD1 and NSFD2 from Chapwanya et al. are considered. NSFD1 was not used by Chapwanya et al. to generate results for the basic reaction–diffusion–chemotaxis model. We find that NSFD1 preserves positivity of the continuous model if some criteria are satisfied, namely, ϕ ( k ) [ ψ ( h ) ] 2 = 1 2 γ ≤ 1 2 σ + β \frac{\phi \left(k)}{{\left[\psi \left(h)]}^{2}}=\frac{1}{2\gamma }\le \frac{1}{2\sigma +\beta } and β ≤ σ \beta \le \sigma , and this is the second novelty of this work. Chapwanya et al. modified NSFD1 to obtain NSFD2, which is positivity preserving if R = ϕ ( k ) [ ψ ( h ) ] 2 = 1 2 γ R=\frac{\phi \left(k)}{{\left[\psi \left(h)]}^{2}}=\frac{1}{2\gamma } and 2 σ R ≤ 1 2\sigma R\le 1 , that is σ ≤ γ \sigma \le \gamma , and they presented some results. For the third highlight of this work, we show that NSFD2 is not always consistent and prove that consistency can be achieved if β → 0 \beta \to 0 and k h 2 → 0 \frac{k}{{h}^{2}}\to 0 . Fourthly, we show numerically that the rate of convergence in time of the four methods for case 2 is approximately one.

IIn this paper, two finite difference methods are used to solve the one-dimensional second order wave equation with constant coefficients subject to specified initial and boundary conditions. Two numerical experiments are considered. The two methods are Central in Time and Central in Space scheme with second order accuracy in both time and space, abbreviated as CTCS (2,2) and Central in Time and Central in Space scheme with second order accuracy in time and fourth order accuracy in space, abbreviated as CTCS (2,4). Properties such as consistency and stability are studied. We also perform spectral analysis of dispersive and dissipative properties of the two methods. Two numerical experiments are considered, and the numerical results are displayed.

In this article, one standard and four nonstandard finite difference methods are used to solve a cross-diffusion malignant invasion model. The model consists of a system of nonlinear coupled partial differential equations (PDEs) subject to specified initial and boundary conditions, and no exact solution is known for this problem. It is difficult to obtain theoretically the stability region of the classical finite difference scheme to solve the set of nonlinear coupled PDEs, this is one of the challenges of this class of method in this work. Three nonstandard methods abbreviated as NSFD1, NSFD2, and NSFD3 are considered from the study of Chapwanya et al., and these methods have been constructed by the use of a more general function replacing the denominator of the discrete derivative and nonlocal approximations of nonlocal terms. It is shown that NSFD1, which preserves positivity when used to solve classical reaction-diffusion equations, does not inherit this property when used for the cross-diffusion system of PDEs. NSFD2 and NSFD3 are obtained by appropriate modifications of NSFD1. NSFD2 is positivity-preserving when the functional relationship [ ψ ( h ) ] 2 = 2 ϕ ( k ) {\left[\psi \left(h)]}^{2}=2\phi \left(k) holds, while NSFD3 is unconditionally dynamically consistent with respect to positivity. First, we show that NSFD2 and NSFD3 are not consistent methods. Second, we tried to modify NSFD2 in order to make it consistent but we were not successful. Third, we extend NSFD3 so that it becomes consistent and still preserves positivity. We denote the extended version of NSFD3 as NSFD5. Finally, we compute the numerical rate of convergence in time for NSFD5 and show that it is close to the theoretical value. NSFD5 is consistent under certain conditions on the step sizes and is unconditionally positivity-preserving.