Mollified birth in natural-age-grid Galerkin methods for age-structured biological systems∗

Abstract We present natural-age-grid Galerkin methods for a model of a biological population undergoing aging. We use a mollified birth term in the method and analysis. The error due to mollification is of arbitrary order, depending on the choice of mollifier. The methods in this paper generalize the methods presented in [1], where the approximation space in age was taken to be a discontinuous piecewise polynomial subspace of L2. We refer to these methods as ‘natural-age-grid’ Galerkin methods since transport in the age variable is computed through the smooth movement of the age grid at the natural dimensionless velocity of one. The time variable has been left continuous to emphasize this smooth motion, as well as the independence of the time and age discretizations. The methods are shown to be superconvergent in the age variable.