N S O D E: Umerical Olution OF Rdinary Ifferential Quations
N S O D E: Umerical Olution OF Rdinary Ifferential Quations
N S O D E: Umerical Olution OF Rdinary Ifferential Quations
Chapter 6 OF ORDINARY
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
6.1 INTRODUCTION
A
physical situation concerned with the rate of change of one quantity
with respect to another gives rise to a differential equation.
Consider the first order ordinary differential equation
dy
= f (x, y) (1)
dx
with the initial condition
y(x0) = y0 (2)
Many analytical techniques exist for solving such equations, but these
methods can be applied to solve only a selected class of differential equations.
However, a majority of differential equations appearing in physical problems
cannot be solved analytically. Thus it becomes imperative to discuss their
solution by numerical methods.
In numerical methods, we do not proceed in the hope of finding a
relation between variables but we find the numerical values of the dependent
variable for certain values of independent variable.
It must be noted that even the differential equations which are solvable by
analytical methods can be solved numerically as well.
479
480 COMPUTER-BASED NUMERICAL AND STATISTICAL TECHNIQUES
Problems in which all the conditions are specified at the initial point only are
called initial-value problems. For example, the problem given by eqns. (1)
and (2) is an initial value problem.
Problems involving second and higher order differential equations, in which
the conditions at two or more points are specified, are called boundary-value
problems.
To obtain a unique solution of nth order ordinary differential equation, it is
necessary to specify n values of the dependent variable and/or its derivative at
specific values of independent variable.
The single step method has obvious advantages over the multi-step methods
that use several past values (yn, yn–1, ......, yn–p) and that require initial values
(y1, y2, ......, yn) that have to be calculated by another method.
The major disadvantage of single-step methods is that they use many more
evaluations of the derivative to attain the same degree of accuracy compared
with the multi-step methods.
z z
y
y0
dy =
x
x0
f ( x, y) dx
⇒ z
y – y0 =
x
x0
f ( x, y) dx
or, y = y0 + z x
x0
f ( x, y) dx (4)
In equation (4), the unknown function y appears under the integral sign.
This type of equation is called integral equation.
This equation can be solved by the method of successive approximations or
iterations.
To obtain the first approximation, we replace y by y0 in the R.H.S. of eqn. (4).
Now, the first approximation is
y(1) = y0 + z x0
x
f ( x, y0 ) dx