Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2016) 131: 209
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2016-16209-1

Regular Article

An improved iterative technique for solving nonlinear doubly singular two-point boundary value problems

Department of Mathematics, Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, 440010, Nagpur, India

^* e-mail: pradipvnit@yahoo.com

Received: 25 March 2016
Accepted: 19 May 2016
Published online: 22 June 2016

Abstract

This paper presents a new iterative technique for solving nonlinear singular two-point boundary value problems with Neumann and Robin boundary conditions. The method is based on the homotopy perturbation method and the integral equation formalism in which a recursive scheme is established for the components of the approximate series solution. This method does not involve solution of a sequence of nonlinear algebraic or transcendental equations for the unknown coefficients as in some other iterative techniques developed for singular boundary value problems. The convergence result for the proposed method is established in the paper. The method is illustrated by four numerical examples, two of which have physical significance: The first problem is an application of the reaction-diffusion process in a porous spherical catalyst and the second problem arises in the study of steady-state oxygen-diffusion in a spherical cell with Michaelis-Menten uptake kinetics.