Copyright © 2013 Lijuan Su and Pei Cheng. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Fractional-order diffusion equations are viewed as generalizations of classical diffusion equations, treating super-diffusive flow processes. In this paper, in order to solve the fractional advection-diffusion equation, the fractional characteristic finite difference method is presented, which is based on the method of characteristics (MOC) and fractional finite difference (FD) procedures. The stability, consistency, convergence, and error estimate of the method are obtained. An example is also given to illustrate the applicability of theoretical results.