On the numerical solution of fractional boundary value problems by a spline quasi-interpolant operator

Boundary value problems having fractional derivative in space are used in several fields, like biology, mechanical engineering, control theory, just to cite a few. In this paper we present a new numerical method for the solution of boundary value problems having Caputo derivative in space. We approximate the solution by the Schoenberg-Bernstein operator, which is a spline positive operator having shape-preserving properties. The unknown coefficients of the approximating operator are determined by a collocation method whose collocation matrices can be constructed efficiently by explicit formulas. The numerical experiments we conducted show that the proposed method is efficient and accurate.