Solutions of a three-dimensional multi-term fractional anomalous solute transport model for contamination in groundwater

Abstract

The study presents a meshless computational approach for simulating the three-dimensional multi-term time-fractional mobile-immobile diffusion equation in the Caputo sense. The methodology combines a stable Crank-Nicolson time-integration scheme with the definition of the Caputo derivative to discretize the problem in the temporal direction. The spatial function derivative is approximated using the inverse multiquadric radial basis function. The solution is approximated on a set of scattered or uniform nodes, resulting in a sparse and well-conditioned coefficient matrix. The study highlights the advantages of meshless method, particularly their simplicity of implementation in higher dimensions. To validate the accuracy and efficacy of the proposed method, we performed numerical simulations and compared them with analytical solutions for various test problems. These simulations were carried out on computational domains of both rectangular and non-rectangular shapes. The research highlights the potential of meshless techniques in solving complex diffusion problems and its successful applications in groundwater contamination and other relevant fields.