Moving mesh methods for solving parabolic partial differential equations

A new adaptive method is described for solving nonlinear parabolic partial differential equations with moving boundaries, using a moving mesh with continuous finite elements. The evolution of the mesh within the interior of the spatial domain is based upon conserving the distribution of a chosen monitor function across the domain throughout time, where the initial distribution is selected based upon the given initial data. The mesh movement at the boundary is governed by a second monitor function, which may or may not be the same as that used to drive the interior mesh movement. The method is described in detail and a selection of computational examples are presented using different monitor functions applied to the porous medium equation (PME) in one and two space dimensions.