In this article,we consider the diffusion equation with multi-term time-fractional derivatives.We first derive,by a subordination principle for the solution,that the solution is positive when the initial value is non-...In this article,we consider the diffusion equation with multi-term time-fractional derivatives.We first derive,by a subordination principle for the solution,that the solution is positive when the initial value is non-negative.As an application,we prove the uniqueness of solution to an inverse problem of determination of the temporally varying source term by integral type information in a subdomain.Finally,several numerical experiments are presented to show the accuracy and efficiency of the algorithm.展开更多
Innovative definitions of the electric and magnetic diffusivities through conducting mediums and innovative diffusion equations of the electric charges and magnetic flux are verified in this article. Such innovations ...Innovative definitions of the electric and magnetic diffusivities through conducting mediums and innovative diffusion equations of the electric charges and magnetic flux are verified in this article. Such innovations depend on the analogy of the governing laws of diffusion of the thermal, electrical, and magnetic energies and newly defined natures of the electric charges and magnetic flux as energy, or as electromagnetic waves, that have electric and magnetic potentials. The introduced diffusion equations of the electric charges and magnetic flux involve Laplacian operator and the introduced diffusivities. Both equations are applied to determine the electric and magnetic fields in conductors as the heat diffusion equation which is applied to determine the thermal field in steady and unsteady heat diffusion conditions. The use of electric networks for experimental modeling of thermal networks represents sufficient proof of similarity of the diffusion equations of both fields. By analysis of the diffusion phenomena of the three considered modes of energy transfer;the rates of flow of these energies are found to be directly proportional to the gradient of their volumetric concentration, or density, and the proportionality constants in such relations are the diffusivity of each energy. Such analysis leads also to find proportionality relations between the potentials of such energies and their volumetric concentrations. Validity of the introduced diffusion equations is verified by correspondence their solutions to the measurement results of the electric and magnetic fields in microwave ovens.展开更多
This paper is devoted to investigating exact solutions of a generalized fractional nonlinear anomalousdiffusion equation in radical symmetry.The presence of external force and absorption is also considered.We firstinv...This paper is devoted to investigating exact solutions of a generalized fractional nonlinear anomalousdiffusion equation in radical symmetry.The presence of external force and absorption is also considered.We firstinvestigate the nonlinear anomalous diffusion equations with one-fractional derivative and then multi-fractional ones.Inboth situations,we obtain the corresponding exact solutions,and the solutions found here can have a compact behavioror a long tailed behavior.展开更多
The generalized conditional symmetry and sign-invariant approaches are developed to study the nonlinear diffusion equations with x-dependent convection and source terms. We obtain conditions under which the equations ...The generalized conditional symmetry and sign-invariant approaches are developed to study the nonlinear diffusion equations with x-dependent convection and source terms. We obtain conditions under which the equations admit the second-order generalized conditional symmetries and the first-order sign-invariants on the solutions. Several types of different generalized conditional symmetries and first-order sign-invariants for the equations with diffusion of power law are obtained. Exact solutions to the resulting equations are constructed.展开更多
A class of nonlinear singularly perturbed problems for reaction diffusion equations are considered. Under suitable conditions, by using the theory of differential inequalities, the asymptotic behavior of solutions for...A class of nonlinear singularly perturbed problems for reaction diffusion equations are considered. Under suitable conditions, by using the theory of differential inequalities, the asymptotic behavior of solutions for the initial boundary value problems are studied, reduced problems of which possess two intersecting solutions.展开更多
The asymptotic behavior of the solutions to a class of pseudoparabolic viscous diffusion equation with periodic initial condition is studied by using the spectral method. The semidiscrete Fourier approximate solution ...The asymptotic behavior of the solutions to a class of pseudoparabolic viscous diffusion equation with periodic initial condition is studied by using the spectral method. The semidiscrete Fourier approximate solution of the problem is constructed and the error estimation between spectral approximate solution and exact solution on large time is also obtained. The existence of the approximate attractor AN and the upper semicontinuity d(AN,A) → 0 are proved.展开更多
We consider the functional separation of variables to the nonlinear diffusion equation with source and convection term: ut = (A(x)D(u)ux)x + B(x)Q(u), Ax ≠ 0. The functional separation of variables to thi...We consider the functional separation of variables to the nonlinear diffusion equation with source and convection term: ut = (A(x)D(u)ux)x + B(x)Q(u), Ax ≠ 0. The functional separation of variables to this equation is studied by using the group foliation method. A classification is carried out for the equations which admit the function separable solutions. As a consequence, some solutions to the resulting equations are obtained.展开更多
In this paper,we investigate a streamline diffusion finite element approxi- mation scheme for the constrained optimal control problem governed by linear con- vection dominated diffusion equations.We prove the existenc...In this paper,we investigate a streamline diffusion finite element approxi- mation scheme for the constrained optimal control problem governed by linear con- vection dominated diffusion equations.We prove the existence and uniqueness of the discretized scheme.Then a priori and a posteriori error estimates are derived for the state,the co-state and the control.Three numerical examples are presented to illustrate our theoretical results.展开更多
Fractional diffusion equations have been the focus of modeling problems in hydrology, biology, viscoelasticity, physics, engineering, and other areas of applications. In this paper, a meshfree method based on the movi...Fractional diffusion equations have been the focus of modeling problems in hydrology, biology, viscoelasticity, physics, engineering, and other areas of applications. In this paper, a meshfree method based on the moving Kriging inter- polation is developed for a two-dimensional time-fractional diffusion equation. The shape function and its derivatives are obtained by the moving Kriging interpolation technique. For possessing the Kronecker delta property, this technique is very efficient in imposing the essential boundary conditions. The governing time-fractional diffusion equations are transformed into a standard weak formulation by the Galerkin method. It is then discretized into a meshfree system of time-dependent equations, which are solved by the standard central difference method. Numerical examples illustrating the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method are presented and discussed in detail.展开更多
In this article,we consider to solve the inverse initial value problem for an inhomogeneous space-time fractional diffusion equation.This problem is ill-posed and the quasi-boundary value method is proposed to deal wi...In this article,we consider to solve the inverse initial value problem for an inhomogeneous space-time fractional diffusion equation.This problem is ill-posed and the quasi-boundary value method is proposed to deal with this inverse problem and obtain the series expression of the regularized solution for the inverse initial value problem.We prove the error estimates between the regularization solution and the exact solution by using an a priori regularization parameter and an a posteriori regularization parameter choice rule.Some numerical results in one-dimensional case and two-dimensional case show that our method is efficient and stable.展开更多
In this paper, we identify a space-dependent source for a fractional diffusion equation. This problem is ill-posed, i.e., the solution (if it exists) does not depend continuously on the data. The generalized Tikhono...In this paper, we identify a space-dependent source for a fractional diffusion equation. This problem is ill-posed, i.e., the solution (if it exists) does not depend continuously on the data. The generalized Tikhonov regularization method is proposed to solve this problem. An a priori error estimate between the exact solution and its regularized approximation is obtained. Moreover, an a posteriori parameter choice rule is proposed and a stable error estimate is also obtained, Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the validity and effectiveness of this method.展开更多
Speckle noise reduction is a key problem of the image analysis of medical UltraSound images. In this paper, two important improvements have been developed to a fast anisotropic diffusion algorithm for speckle noise re...Speckle noise reduction is a key problem of the image analysis of medical UltraSound images. In this paper, two important improvements have been developed to a fast anisotropic diffusion algorithm for speckle noise reduction. The Gaussian filter is firstly used before gradient calculation, and then the adaptive algorithm of the factor k is proposed. Numerous experimental results show that the proposed model is superior to other methods in noise removal, fidelity and edge preservation. It is suitable for the preprocessing of a great number of medical UltraSound images, such as three dimen- sional reconstruction.展开更多
A balance of urban datum land prices is achieved to harmonize regional land prices and make the prices truly reflect different economic development levels and land prices among cities. The current piecewise linear int...A balance of urban datum land prices is achieved to harmonize regional land prices and make the prices truly reflect different economic development levels and land prices among cities. The current piecewise linear interpolation balance method widely used has two drawbacks that always lead to an unsatisfactory balance among some cities. When the excess of land price in the central city to the surrounding zone reaches a certain degree, land price in the circumjacent city is not only consistent with the local land grade and land use level, but also influenced by the diffusion of land price in the central city. Thus, a new balanced scheme of datum land prices based on the city gravitation model and stochastic diffusion equation is brought forward. Finally, the new method is examined in the practice of datum land price balance in Hubei Province, China.展开更多
In this paper,we apply the Fourier analysis technique to investigate superconvergence properties of the direct disontinuous Galerkin(DDG)method(Liu and Yan in SIAM J Numer Anal 47(1):475-698,2009),the DDG method with ...In this paper,we apply the Fourier analysis technique to investigate superconvergence properties of the direct disontinuous Galerkin(DDG)method(Liu and Yan in SIAM J Numer Anal 47(1):475-698,2009),the DDG method with the interface correction(DDGIC)(Liu and Yan in Commun Comput Phys 8(3):541-564,2010),the symmetric DDG method(Vidden and Yan in Comput Math 31(6):638-662,2013),and the nonsymmetric DDG method(Yan in J Sci Comput 54(2):663-683,2013).We also include the study of the interior penalty DG(IPDG)method,due to its close relation to DDG methods.Error estimates are carried out for both P2 and P3 polynomial approximations.By investigating the quantitative errors at the Lobatto points,we show that the DDGIC and symmetric DDG methods are superior,in the sense of obtaining(k+2)th superconvergence orders for both P2 and P3 approximations.Superconvergence order of(k+2)is also observed for the IPDG method with P3 polynomial approximations.The errors are sensitive to the choice of the numerical flux coefficient for even degree P2 approximations,but are not for odd degree P3 approxi-mations.Numerical experiments are carried out at the same time and the numerical errors match well with the analytically estimated errors.展开更多
The numerical solution of large scale multi-dimensional convection diffusion equations often requires efficient parallel algorithms.In this work,we consider the extension of a recently proposed non-overlapping domain ...The numerical solution of large scale multi-dimensional convection diffusion equations often requires efficient parallel algorithms.In this work,we consider the extension of a recently proposed non-overlapping domain decomposition method for two dimensional time dependent convection diffusion equations with variable coefficients. By combining predictor-corrector technique,modified upwind differences with explicitimplicit coupling,the method under consideration provides intrinsic parallelism while maintaining good stability and accuracy.Moreover,for multi-dimensional problems, the method can be readily implemented on a multi-processor system and does not have the limitation on the choice of subdomains required by some other similar predictor-corrector or stabilized schemes.These properties of the method are demonstrated in this work through both rigorous mathematical analysis and numerical experiments.展开更多
In this article, a degenerate and singular diffusion problem is studied. The existence of solutions is established by parabolic regularization. Some properties of solutions, for instance, asymptotic behavior, are also...In this article, a degenerate and singular diffusion problem is studied. The existence of solutions is established by parabolic regularization. Some properties of solutions, for instance, asymptotic behavior, are also discussed.展开更多
We present scheme I for solving one-dimensional fractional diffusion equation with variable coefficients based on the maximum modulus principle and two Grunwald approxima- tions. Scheme II is obtained by using classic...We present scheme I for solving one-dimensional fractional diffusion equation with variable coefficients based on the maximum modulus principle and two Grunwald approxima- tions. Scheme II is obtained by using classic Crank-Nicolson approximations in order to improve the time convergence. Schemes are proved to be unconditionally stable and second-order accuracy in spatial grid size for the problem with order of fractional derivative belonging to [(√17- 1)/2, 2] using the maximum modulus principle. A numerical example is given to confirm the theoretical analysis result.展开更多
The functionally generalized variable separation of the generalized nonlinear diffusion equations ut = A(u, Ux)Uxx + B(u, ux) is studied by using the conditional Lie-Blicklund symmetry method. The variant forms o...The functionally generalized variable separation of the generalized nonlinear diffusion equations ut = A(u, Ux)Uxx + B(u, ux) is studied by using the conditional Lie-Blicklund symmetry method. The variant forms of the considered equations, which admit the corresponding conditional Lie--Biicklund symmetries, are characterized. To construct functionally gener- alized separable solutions, several concrete examples defined on the exponential and trigonometric invariant subspaces are provided.展开更多
A mixed time discontinuous space-time finite element scheme for secondorder convection diffusion problems is constructed and analyzed. Order of the equation is lowered by the mixed finite element method. The low order...A mixed time discontinuous space-time finite element scheme for secondorder convection diffusion problems is constructed and analyzed. Order of the equation is lowered by the mixed finite element method. The low order equation is discretized with a space-time finite element method, continuous in space but discontinuous in time. Stability, existence, uniqueness and convergence of the approximate solutions are proved. Numerical results are presented to illustrate efficiency of the proposed method.展开更多
基金supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(12271277)the Open Research Fund of Key Laboratory of Nonlinear Analysis&Applications(Central China Normal University),Ministry of Education,China.
文摘In this article,we consider the diffusion equation with multi-term time-fractional derivatives.We first derive,by a subordination principle for the solution,that the solution is positive when the initial value is non-negative.As an application,we prove the uniqueness of solution to an inverse problem of determination of the temporally varying source term by integral type information in a subdomain.Finally,several numerical experiments are presented to show the accuracy and efficiency of the algorithm.
文摘Innovative definitions of the electric and magnetic diffusivities through conducting mediums and innovative diffusion equations of the electric charges and magnetic flux are verified in this article. Such innovations depend on the analogy of the governing laws of diffusion of the thermal, electrical, and magnetic energies and newly defined natures of the electric charges and magnetic flux as energy, or as electromagnetic waves, that have electric and magnetic potentials. The introduced diffusion equations of the electric charges and magnetic flux involve Laplacian operator and the introduced diffusivities. Both equations are applied to determine the electric and magnetic fields in conductors as the heat diffusion equation which is applied to determine the thermal field in steady and unsteady heat diffusion conditions. The use of electric networks for experimental modeling of thermal networks represents sufficient proof of similarity of the diffusion equations of both fields. By analysis of the diffusion phenomena of the three considered modes of energy transfer;the rates of flow of these energies are found to be directly proportional to the gradient of their volumetric concentration, or density, and the proportionality constants in such relations are the diffusivity of each energy. Such analysis leads also to find proportionality relations between the potentials of such energies and their volumetric concentrations. Validity of the introduced diffusion equations is verified by correspondence their solutions to the measurement results of the electric and magnetic fields in microwave ovens.
基金Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.60641006the National Science Foundation of Shandong Province under Grant No.Y2007A06
文摘This paper is devoted to investigating exact solutions of a generalized fractional nonlinear anomalousdiffusion equation in radical symmetry.The presence of external force and absorption is also considered.We firstinvestigate the nonlinear anomalous diffusion equations with one-fractional derivative and then multi-fractional ones.Inboth situations,we obtain the corresponding exact solutions,and the solutions found here can have a compact behavioror a long tailed behavior.
基金The project supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.19901027the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province of China
文摘The generalized conditional symmetry and sign-invariant approaches are developed to study the nonlinear diffusion equations with x-dependent convection and source terms. We obtain conditions under which the equations admit the second-order generalized conditional symmetries and the first-order sign-invariants on the solutions. Several types of different generalized conditional symmetries and first-order sign-invariants for the equations with diffusion of power law are obtained. Exact solutions to the resulting equations are constructed.
基金The Importent Study Profect of the National Natural Science Poundation of China(90211004)The Natural Sciences Foundation of Zheiiang(102009)
文摘A class of nonlinear singularly perturbed problems for reaction diffusion equations are considered. Under suitable conditions, by using the theory of differential inequalities, the asymptotic behavior of solutions for the initial boundary value problems are studied, reduced problems of which possess two intersecting solutions.
基金This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China(10271034)
文摘The asymptotic behavior of the solutions to a class of pseudoparabolic viscous diffusion equation with periodic initial condition is studied by using the spectral method. The semidiscrete Fourier approximate solution of the problem is constructed and the error estimation between spectral approximate solution and exact solution on large time is also obtained. The existence of the approximate attractor AN and the upper semicontinuity d(AN,A) → 0 are proved.
基金The project supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 10371098 and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in Universities under Grant No. NCET-04-0968
文摘We consider the functional separation of variables to the nonlinear diffusion equation with source and convection term: ut = (A(x)D(u)ux)x + B(x)Q(u), Ax ≠ 0. The functional separation of variables to this equation is studied by using the group foliation method. A classification is carried out for the equations which admit the function separable solutions. As a consequence, some solutions to the resulting equations are obtained.
基金supported by the National Basic Research Program under the Grant 2005CB321701the National Natural Science Foundation of China under the Grants 60474027 and 10771211.
文摘In this paper,we investigate a streamline diffusion finite element approxi- mation scheme for the constrained optimal control problem governed by linear con- vection dominated diffusion equations.We prove the existence and uniqueness of the discretized scheme.Then a priori and a posteriori error estimates are derived for the state,the co-state and the control.Three numerical examples are presented to illustrate our theoretical results.
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.11072117)the Natural Science Foundation of Ningbo City,China(GrantNo.2013A610103)+2 种基金the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province,China(Grant No.Y6090131)the Disciplinary Project of Ningbo City,China(GrantNo.SZXL1067)the K.C.Wong Magna Fund in Ningbo University,China
文摘Fractional diffusion equations have been the focus of modeling problems in hydrology, biology, viscoelasticity, physics, engineering, and other areas of applications. In this paper, a meshfree method based on the moving Kriging inter- polation is developed for a two-dimensional time-fractional diffusion equation. The shape function and its derivatives are obtained by the moving Kriging interpolation technique. For possessing the Kronecker delta property, this technique is very efficient in imposing the essential boundary conditions. The governing time-fractional diffusion equations are transformed into a standard weak formulation by the Galerkin method. It is then discretized into a meshfree system of time-dependent equations, which are solved by the standard central difference method. Numerical examples illustrating the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method are presented and discussed in detail.
基金The project is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(11561045,11961044)the Doctor Fund of Lan Zhou University of Technology.
文摘In this article,we consider to solve the inverse initial value problem for an inhomogeneous space-time fractional diffusion equation.This problem is ill-posed and the quasi-boundary value method is proposed to deal with this inverse problem and obtain the series expression of the regularized solution for the inverse initial value problem.We prove the error estimates between the regularization solution and the exact solution by using an a priori regularization parameter and an a posteriori regularization parameter choice rule.Some numerical results in one-dimensional case and two-dimensional case show that our method is efficient and stable.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(11171136, 11261032)the Distinguished Young Scholars Fund of Lan Zhou University of Technology (Q201015)the basic scientific research business expenses of Gansu province college
文摘In this paper, we identify a space-dependent source for a fractional diffusion equation. This problem is ill-posed, i.e., the solution (if it exists) does not depend continuously on the data. The generalized Tikhonov regularization method is proposed to solve this problem. An a priori error estimate between the exact solution and its regularized approximation is obtained. Moreover, an a posteriori parameter choice rule is proposed and a stable error estimate is also obtained, Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the validity and effectiveness of this method.
基金Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.60272060)Doctoral Foundation of Ministry of Education (No.20030610032)Sichuan Youth Science and Technology Foundation (No.04ZQ026-013).
文摘Speckle noise reduction is a key problem of the image analysis of medical UltraSound images. In this paper, two important improvements have been developed to a fast anisotropic diffusion algorithm for speckle noise reduction. The Gaussian filter is firstly used before gradient calculation, and then the adaptive algorithm of the factor k is proposed. Numerous experimental results show that the proposed model is superior to other methods in noise removal, fidelity and edge preservation. It is suitable for the preprocessing of a great number of medical UltraSound images, such as three dimen- sional reconstruction.
文摘A balance of urban datum land prices is achieved to harmonize regional land prices and make the prices truly reflect different economic development levels and land prices among cities. The current piecewise linear interpolation balance method widely used has two drawbacks that always lead to an unsatisfactory balance among some cities. When the excess of land price in the central city to the surrounding zone reaches a certain degree, land price in the circumjacent city is not only consistent with the local land grade and land use level, but also influenced by the diffusion of land price in the central city. Thus, a new balanced scheme of datum land prices based on the city gravitation model and stochastic diffusion equation is brought forward. Finally, the new method is examined in the practice of datum land price balance in Hubei Province, China.
基金the National Science Foundation grant DMS-1620335 and Simons Foundation Grant 637716Research work of Xinghui Zhong is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(NSFC)(Grant no.11871428).
文摘In this paper,we apply the Fourier analysis technique to investigate superconvergence properties of the direct disontinuous Galerkin(DDG)method(Liu and Yan in SIAM J Numer Anal 47(1):475-698,2009),the DDG method with the interface correction(DDGIC)(Liu and Yan in Commun Comput Phys 8(3):541-564,2010),the symmetric DDG method(Vidden and Yan in Comput Math 31(6):638-662,2013),and the nonsymmetric DDG method(Yan in J Sci Comput 54(2):663-683,2013).We also include the study of the interior penalty DG(IPDG)method,due to its close relation to DDG methods.Error estimates are carried out for both P2 and P3 polynomial approximations.By investigating the quantitative errors at the Lobatto points,we show that the DDGIC and symmetric DDG methods are superior,in the sense of obtaining(k+2)th superconvergence orders for both P2 and P3 approximations.Superconvergence order of(k+2)is also observed for the IPDG method with P3 polynomial approximations.The errors are sensitive to the choice of the numerical flux coefficient for even degree P2 approximations,but are not for odd degree P3 approxi-mations.Numerical experiments are carried out at the same time and the numerical errors match well with the analytically estimated errors.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.10571017)supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.60533020)supported in part by NSF DMS 0712744
文摘The numerical solution of large scale multi-dimensional convection diffusion equations often requires efficient parallel algorithms.In this work,we consider the extension of a recently proposed non-overlapping domain decomposition method for two dimensional time dependent convection diffusion equations with variable coefficients. By combining predictor-corrector technique,modified upwind differences with explicitimplicit coupling,the method under consideration provides intrinsic parallelism while maintaining good stability and accuracy.Moreover,for multi-dimensional problems, the method can be readily implemented on a multi-processor system and does not have the limitation on the choice of subdomains required by some other similar predictor-corrector or stabilized schemes.These properties of the method are demonstrated in this work through both rigorous mathematical analysis and numerical experiments.
基金Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China(10171113 and 10471156)Natural Science Foundation of GuangDong 2004(4009793).
文摘In this article, a degenerate and singular diffusion problem is studied. The existence of solutions is established by parabolic regularization. Some properties of solutions, for instance, asymptotic behavior, are also discussed.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(91330106,11171190,51269024,11161036)the National Nature Science Foundation of Ningxia(NZ14233)
文摘We present scheme I for solving one-dimensional fractional diffusion equation with variable coefficients based on the maximum modulus principle and two Grunwald approxima- tions. Scheme II is obtained by using classic Crank-Nicolson approximations in order to improve the time convergence. Schemes are proved to be unconditionally stable and second-order accuracy in spatial grid size for the problem with order of fractional derivative belonging to [(√17- 1)/2, 2] using the maximum modulus principle. A numerical example is given to confirm the theoretical analysis result.
基金Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.11371293,11401458,and 11501438)the National Natural Science Foundation of China,Tian Yuan Special Foundation(Grant No.11426169)the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China(Gran No.2015JQ1014)
文摘The functionally generalized variable separation of the generalized nonlinear diffusion equations ut = A(u, Ux)Uxx + B(u, ux) is studied by using the conditional Lie-Blicklund symmetry method. The variant forms of the considered equations, which admit the corresponding conditional Lie--Biicklund symmetries, are characterized. To construct functionally gener- alized separable solutions, several concrete examples defined on the exponential and trigonometric invariant subspaces are provided.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 10601022)NSF ofInner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China (No. 200607010106)513 and Science Fund of InnerMongolia University for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. ND0702)
文摘A mixed time discontinuous space-time finite element scheme for secondorder convection diffusion problems is constructed and analyzed. Order of the equation is lowered by the mixed finite element method. The low order equation is discretized with a space-time finite element method, continuous in space but discontinuous in time. Stability, existence, uniqueness and convergence of the approximate solutions are proved. Numerical results are presented to illustrate efficiency of the proposed method.