A Nonstandard Finite Difference Scheme for a Nonlinear Parabolic Equation with p-Laplacian-Type Diffusion

Abstract

We propose and analyze a nonstandard finite difference (NSFD) scheme for nonlinear parabolic equations involving a p-Laplacian-type diffusion operator in one- and two-dimensional spatial domains. Following Mickens' design principles, the proposed discretization employs a nonlinear denominator function phi(.) together with a nonlocal approximation of the nonlinear diffusion term Delta_p, yielding a structure-preserving discrete model. The scheme is designed to retain key qualitative properties of the continuous problem, including positivity, boundedness, and stability, which may be lost by standard finite difference methods (FDMs). We establish the well-posedness of the continuous model, derive the NSFD scheme, and investigate its consistency, convergence, and local truncation error. Numerical experiments confirm the theoretical results and demonstrate that, unlike the standard explicit FDM, the proposed NSFD scheme avoids spurious oscillations and nonphysical negative solutions even for relatively large time-step sizes.