The Finite Difference Methods for Multi-phase Free Boundary Problems

This thesis consist of an introduction and four research papers concerning numerical analysis for a certain class of free boundary problems. Paper I is devoted to the numerical analysis of the so-called two-phase membrane problem. Projected Gauss-Seidel method is constructed. We prove general convergence of the algorithm as well as obtain the error estimate for the finite difference scheme. In Paper II we have improved known results on the error estimates for a Classical Obstacle (One-Phase) Problem with a finite difference scheme. Paper III deals with the parabolic version of the two-phase obstacle-like problem. We introduce a certain variational form, which allows us to definea notion of viscosity solution. The uniqueness of viscosity solution is proved, and numerical nonlinear Gauss-Seidel method is constructed. In the last paper, we study a numerical approximation for a class of stationary states for reaction-diffusion system with m densities having disjoint support. The proof of convergence of the numerical method is given in some particular cases. We also apply our numerical simulations for the spatial segregation limit of diffusive Lotka-Volterra models in presence of high competition and inhomogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions.QC 2011051