An Operational Unification of Finite Difference Methods for the Numerical Integration of Ordinary Differential Equations

Harvard Lomax

Jan 1967 · National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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One purpose of this report is to present a mathematical procedure which can be used to study and compare various numerical methods for integrating ordinary differential equations. This procedure is relatively simple, mathematically rigorous, and of such a nature that matters of interest in digital computations, such as machine memory and running time, can be weighed against the accuracy and stability provided by the method under consideration. Briefly, the procedure is as follows: (1) Find a single differential equation that is sufficiently representative (this is fully defined in the report) of an arbitrary number of nonhomogeneous, linear, ordinary differential equations with constant coefficients. (2) Solve this differential equation exactly. (3) Choose any given numerical method, use it -- in its entirety -- to reduce the differential equation to difference equations, and, by means of operational techniques, solve the latter exactly. (4) Study and compare the results of (2) and (3). Conceptually there is nothing new in this procedure, but the particular development presented in this report does not appear to have been carried out before. Another purpose is to use the procedure just described to analyze a variety of numerical methods, ranging from classical, predictor-corrector systems to Runge-Kutta techniques and including various combinations of the two.