Dynamics of the time-fractional reaction–diffusion coupled equations in biological and chemical processes

Abstract This paper aims to demonstrate a numerical strategy via finite difference formulations for time fractional reaction–diffusion models which are ubiquitous in chemical and biological phenomena. The time-fractional derivative is considered in the Caputo sense for both linear and nonlinear problems. First, the Caputo derivative is replaced with a quadrature formula, then an implicit method is used for the remaining part. In the linear case, the proposed strategy reduces the time fractional models into linear simultaneous equations. In nonlinear cases, Quasilinearization is utilized to tackle the nonlinear parts. With this strategy, solutions of the fractional system transform into linear algebraic systems which are easy to solve. Next, the Von Neumann method is implemented to examine the stability of the scheme which discloses that the scheme is unconditionally stable. Further, the applicability of the presented scheme is tested with different linear and nonlinear models which include the one dimensional Schnakenberg and Gray–Scott models, and one and two dimensional Brusselator models. To analyze the accuracy of the present technique two norms namely, L L ∞ and L₂ L 2, and relative error are addressed. Moreover, the obtained outcomes are shown tabulated and graphically which identifies that the scheme properly works for the time fractional reaction–diffusion systems.