Numerical approximation of a parabolic problem with nonlinear boundary condition in several space dimensions

(Communicated by Jerry Bona) Abstract. In this paper we study the asymptotic behavior of a semidiscrete numerical approximation for the heat equation, ut = ∆u, in a bounded smooth domain with a nonlinear flux boundary condition, ∂u ∂η = up. We focus in the behavior of blowing up solutions. We prove that every numerical solution blows up in finite time if and only if p> 1 and that the numerical blow-up time converges to the continuous one as the mesh parameter goes to zero. Also we show that the blow-up rate for the numerical scheme is different from the continuous one. Nevertheless we find that the blow-up set for the numerical approximations is contained in a small neighborhood of the blow-up set of the continuous problem when the mesh parameter is small enough. 1. Introduction. I