The Continuous Galerkin Method for Fractional Order Viscoelasticity

Abstract: We consider a fractional order integro-differential equation with a weakly singular convolution kernel. The equation with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions is reformulated as an abstract Cauchy problem, and well-posedness is verified in the context of linear semigroup theory. Then we formulate a continuous Galerkin method for the problem, and we prove stability estimates. These are then used to prove a priori error estimates. The theory is illustrated by a numerical example.