A chemorepulsion model with superlinear production: analysis of the continuous problem and two approximately positive and energy-stable schemes

Abstract

AbstractWe consider the following repulsive-productive chemotaxis model: find u ≥ 0, the cell density, and v ≥ 0, the chemical concentration, satisfying $$ \left\{ \begin{array}{l} \partial_t u - {\Delta} u - \nabla\cdot (u\nabla v)=0 \ \ \text{ in}\ {\Omega},\ t>0,\\ \partial_t v - {\Delta} v + v = u^p \ \ { in}\ {\Omega},\ t>0, \end{array} \right. $$ ∂ t u − Δ u − ∇ ⋅ ( u ∇ v ) = 0 in Ω , t > 0 , ∂ t v − Δ v + v = u p i n Ω , t > 0 , with p ∈ (1, 2), ${\Omega }\subseteq \mathbb {R}^{d}$ Ω ⊆ ℝ d a bounded domain (d = 1, 2, 3), endowed with non-flux boundary conditions. By using a regularization technique, we prove the existence of global in time weak solutions of (1) which is regular and unique for d = 1, 2. Moreover, we propose two fully discrete Finite Element (FE) nonlinear schemes, the first one defined in the variables (u,v) under structured meshes, and the second one by using the auxiliary variable σ = ∇v and defined in general meshes. We prove some unconditional properties for both schemes, such as mass-conservation, solvability, energy-stability and approximated positivity. Finally, we compare the behavior of these schemes with respect to the classical FE backward Euler scheme throughout several numerical simulations and give some conclusions.