Finite Element Analysis of Time Fractional Integro-differential Equations of Kirchhoff type for Non-homogeneous Materials

In this paper, we study an initial-boundary value problem of Kirchhoff type involving memory term for non-homogeneous materials. The purpose of this research is threefold. First, we prove the existence and uniqueness of weak solutions to the problem using the Galerkin method. Second, to obtain numerical solutions efficiently, we develop a L1 type backward Euler-Galerkin FEM, which is $O(h+k^{2-\alpha})$ accurate, where $\alpha~ (0<\alpha<1)$ is the order of fractional time derivative, $h$ and $k$ are the discretization parameters for space and time directions, respectively. Next, to achieve the optimal rate of convergence in time, we propose a fractional Crank-Nicolson-Galerkin FEM based on L2-1$_{\sigma}$ scheme. We prove that the numerical solutions of this scheme converge to the exact solution with accuracy $O(h+k^{2})$. We also derive a priori bounds on numerical solutions for the proposed schemes. Finally, some numerical experiments are conducted to validate our theoretical claims.