Thesis (MSc (Applied Mathematics))--Stellenbosch University, 2008. / The Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) hierarchy is an important class of nonlinear evolution equa- tions with various applications in the physical sciences and in engineering. In this thesis analytical solution methods were used to ¯nd exact solutions of the third and ¯fth order KdV equations, and numerical methods were used to compute numerical solutions of these equations. Analytical methods used include the Fan sub-equation method for constructing exact trav- eling wave solutions, and the simpli¯ed Hirota method for constructing exact N-soliton solutions. Some well known cases were considered. The Fourier spectral method and the ¯nite di®erence method with Runge-Kutta time dis- cretisation were employed to solve the third and the ¯fth order KdV equations with periodic boundary conditions. The one soliton and the two soliton solutions were used as initial conditions. The numerical solutions are obtained and compared with the exact solutions. The propagation of a single soliton as well as the interaction of double soliton solutions is modeled well by both numerical methods, although the Fourier spectral method performs better. The stability, consistency and convergence of these numerical methods were investigated. Error propagation is studied. The theoretically predicted quadratic convergence of the ¯nite di®erence method as well as the exponential convergence of the Fourier spectral method is con¯rmed in numerical experiments.

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