1. Introduction
Fractional calculus (FC) is described as an extension to arbitrarily non-integer order of ordinary differentiation. Due to its extensive implementations in the engineering and science fields, its research has attained considerable significance and prominence during the last few years. FC is being used for modeling physical phenomena by fractional-order differential equations (FODEs). Nowadays, several other relevant areas of FC are found in numerous fields of application such as chemistry, electricity, biology, mechanics, geology, economics, signal processing, and image theory [
1,
2,
3,
4]. Although, fractional-order derivatives have a significant model for detecting inherited characteristics of various conditions and treatments.
The reaction–diffusion equations (RDEs) emerge naturally as models for explaining several problems’ adaptation in the physical world, such as chemistry, biology, etc. The RDEs are used to explain the co-oxidation on Pt(1 1 0), the overview of the time–space variations of
cytoplasmic dynamics in T cells under the impacts of
-activated released channels, the problem in finance and hydrology. Several cellulars and sub-cellular biological mechanisms can be defined in the forms of species that diffuse and react chemically [
5,
6,
7]. The structure of diffusion is defined by a time scaling of the mean square displacement proportional to
of order
. Many physical models are more accurately established in the form of FODEs. Fractional derivatives are more efficient in the model and provide an excellent tool to explain the history of the variable and the inherited properties of different dynamic systems. The TFRD model provides a valuable description of dynamics in complex processes defined by non-exponential relaxation and irregular diffusion [
8,
9]. In the TFRD model, the time derivative defines the extent-based physical phenomena, recognized as historical physical dependence, the spatial derivative explains the path dependence and global characteristics of physical processes [
10].
Consider the TFRD model of the form [
11]:
having initial and boundary conditions:
where
is a constant,
is a diffusivity constant and
,
,
,
are known functions.
is a Caputo–Fabrizio fractional derivative (CFFD) and
. The CFFD has introduced a new aspect to the research of FODEs. However, the Caputo, Riemann–Liouville, etc. operators exhibit a kernel for power-law and have shortcomings in modeling physical problems. The elegance of the CFFD operator is that it contains a non-singular kernel with exponential decay [
12]. It is constructed with an exponential function and ordinary derivative convolution but as for the Caputo and Riemann–Liouville fractional derivatives, it preserves the same inherent inspiring characteristics of heterogeneous and configuration for various scales [
13,
14]. Application of CFFD has been discussed in several articles recently, for example, in a mass–spring Damper system [
15], non-linear Fisher’s diffusion model [
16], electric circuits [
13], diffusive transport system [
14], fractional Maxwell fluid [
17].
In many cases, the fractional reaction–diffusion model (FRDM) has no analytical exact solution because of the non-locality of fractional derivatives. Therefore, the numerical solution of TFRD equation has fundamental scientific importance and functional and practical implementation significance. Rida et al. [
18] solved the TFRD model via a generalized differential transform method. Turut and Güzel [
19] applied Caputo derivative and multivariate Padé approximation to solve TFRD model numerically. Gong et al. [
20] developed a numerical method depend on the domain decomposition algorithm for solving TFRD equation. Sungu and Demir [
21] derived the hybrid generalized differential method and finite difference method (FDM) for solving the TFRD model numerically. Several numerical techniques for the TFRD model are seen in literature; such as explicit FDM [
22],
-Galerkin mixed finite element method [
23], implicit FDM [
24], the explicit–implicit and implicit–explicit method [
10], Legendre tau spectral method [
25]. Ersoy and Dag [
26] solved the FRDM using the exponential cubic B-spline technique. Zheng et al. [
27] presented the numerical algorithm of FRDM with a moving boundary using FDM and spectral approximation. Owelabi and Dutta [
28] considered the Laplace and the Fourier transform to solve FRDM numerically. Zeynab and Habibollah [
29] solved the fractional reaction–convection–diffusion model numerically using wavelets operational matrices and B-spline scaling functions. Kanth and Garg [
11] proposed the exponential cubic B-spline for solving the TFRD equation with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Pandey et al. [
30] obtained the numerical solution of TFRD equation in porous media using homotopy perturbation and Laplace transform.
The ECBS is a very well-known approximation method consisting of a free parameter within the interval and piecewise polynomial function of class
. Akram et al. [
31,
32] solved the time-fractional diffusion problems using ECBS in Caputo and Riemann–Liouville sense. Various numerical techniques based on ECBS functions have been used to approximate fractional partial differential models, such as linear and non-linear time-fractional telegraph models [
33,
34], fractional Fisher’s model [
35], time fractional Burger’s model [
36], fractional Klein–Gordon model [
37], time-fractional diffusion wave model [
38], fractional advection-diffusion model [
39].
The goal of this research is to explore a numerical technique for the TFRD model, which is an implicit method and is based on ECBS and CFFD methods. This non-singular kernel operator is used in B-spline methods for the first time. The TFRD model has not been developed to the highest of the author’s understanding so far with the ECBS approximation. The paper is set out as follows: the CFFD operator and ECBS function are defined in
Section 2. Time discretization in terms of FDM is explained in
Section 3. To solve the TFRD model, the CFFD and ECBS are implemented in
Section 4. The unconditional stability and the convergence are proved in
Section 5 and
Section 6, respectively.
Section 7 and
Section 8 consist of numerical results and the conclusion.
5. Stability Analysis
The principle of stability is connected to computing method errors which do not rise as the procedure continues. We will analyze the stability using the Von Neumann approach. Suppose
in the form of Fourier mode represents the growth factor and
is the computed solution. Consequently, we defined the error term at
mth time stage as
Substituting Equation (
19) in (
14), we have obtained the error equation as follows:
Assume that the difference equation for the ECBS function in one Fourier mode as
where
and
are the size of the element, Fourier coefficient, mode number respectively. Using the Equation (
21) and ECBS functions in (
20), we obtain
All throughout divided by
and reorganization of the terms, we achieve
Taking the term common on both sides then dividing by
, we attain
where
,
.
Proposition 1. Let be the solution of TFRD Equation (1), we have Proof. We verify this result with the assistance of mathematical induction. Substitute
in Equation (
22), we acquire
Since
, we have
Assume that
for
For
, we have
Thus , so that This implies that the proposed method for TFRD model is unconditionally stable. □
7. Illustration of Numerical Results
In this portion, we will go through some numerical results for the ECBS technique. The theoretical statements were verified with errors. All computational results can be carried out in any programming language. The errors between the results obtained by the ECBS and the analytical results
and
are estimated as
The following definition can be employed numerically evaluate the convergence order:
where
and
are the errors at nodal points
and
.
Example 1. Consider the TFRD of the form:withwhere and analytical solution is [11]. Table 1 shows the comparison of computational and analytical values corresponding to various
,
and
at
.
Table 2 displays the maximum errors and the order of convergence for
,
and
,
respectively corresponding to numerous
and
h at
.
Table 3 displays the
and
errors at
and
corresponding
. The piece-wise solutions of Example 1 for
,
,
at
are shown in Equation (
31). The polynomial also shows that the solution based on the basis function of degree 4.
Figure 2 and
Figure 3 depict the graphs of computational outcomes at dissimilar time sizes and errors at different
corresponding
.
Figure 4 illustrates the space–time plot for
,
and
at
. The graphical and computational results show that as we increase the number of partitioning in time–space directions, errors decrease.
The piece-wise solution can be attained as:
Example 2. Consider the TFRD of the form:withwhere and analytic solution is [10,11]. Table 4 exhibits the maximum errors and order of convergence for
, different
and
h.
Table 5 demonstrates that the comparison of computational and exact values corresponding different
,
and
.
Table 6 displays the
and
errors at
and
corresponding
. The computational values show that these results are compatible with the exact solutions. The piece-wise solutions of Example 2 for
,
,
at
are presented in Equation (
32). This polynomial also presents that we have utilized the degree 4 basis function to obtain the computational outcomes.
Figure 5 displays the numerical values at different time levels while
Figure 6 and
Figure 7 depict the comparison of errors for
at
and space–time graph of absolute errors for
,
and
at
.
The piece-wise solution can be attained as: