Fixed mesh approximation of ordinary differential equations with impulses

When trains of impulse controls are present on the right-hand side of a system of ordinary differential equations, the solution is no longer smooth and contains jumps which can accumulate at several points in the time interval. In technological and physical systems the sum of the absolute value of all the impulses is finite and hence the total variation of the solution is finite. So the solution at best belongs to the space BV of vector functions with bounded variation. Unless variable node methods are used, the loss of smoothness of the solution would a priori make higher-order methods over a fixed mesh inactractive. Indeed in general the order of -convergence is and the nodal rate is . However in the linear case -convergence rate remains but the nodal rate can go up to by using one-step or multistep scheme with a nodal rate up to when the solution belongs to . Proofs are given of error estimates and several numerical experiments confirm the optimality of the estimates. Received March 15, 1996 / Revised version received January 3, 1997     

Stability of Runge-Kutta methods for linear delay differential equations

Summary. This paper investigates the stability of Runge-Kutta methods when they are applied to the complex linear scalar delay differential equation . This kind of stability is called stability. We give a characterization of stable Runge-Kutta methods and then we prove that implicit Euler method is stable. Received November 3, 1998 / Revised version received March 23, 1999 / Published online July 12, 2000     

Numerical solution of constant coefficient linear delay differential equations as abstract Cauchy problems

Summary. In this paper we present an approach for the numerical solution of delay differential equations where , and , different from the classical step-by-step method. We restate (1) as an abstract Cauchy problem and then we discretize it in a system of ordinary differential equations. The scheme of discretization is proved to be convergent. Moreover the asymptotic stability is investigated for two significant classes of asymptotically stable problems (1). Received May 4, 1998 / Revised version received January 25, 1999 / Published online November 17, 1999     

On structural stability of ordinary differential equations with respect to discretization methods

Summary. On compact -dimensional discs, Morse-Smale differential systems having no periodic orbits are considered. The main result is that they are correctly reproduced by one-step discretization methods. For methods of order and stepsize sufficiently small, the time--map of the induced local flow and the -discretized system are joined by a conjugacy -near to the identity. The paper fits well in the rapidly growing list of results stating that hyperbolic/transversal structures are preserved by discretization. The proof relies heavily on techniques elaborated by Robbin (1971) in establishing his structural stability theorem on self-diffeomorphisms of compact manifolds. Received February 24, 1994 / Revised version received February 20, 1995     

Stability of the Radau IA and Lobatto IIIC methods for delay differential equations

Recently, we have proved that the Radau IA and Lobatto IIIC methods are P-stable, i.e., they have an analogous stability property to A-stability with respect to scalar delay differential equations (DDEs). In this paper, we study stability of those methods applied to multidimensional DDEs. We show that they have a similar property to P-stability with respect to multidimensional equations which satisfy certain conditions for asymptotic stability of the zero solutions. The conditions are closely related to stability criteria for DDEs considered in systems theory. Received October 8, 1996 / Revised version received February 21, 1997     

On the convergence of Runge–Kutta methods for stiff non linear differential equations

Summary. This paper studies the convergence properties of general Runge–Kutta methods when applied to the numerical solution of a special class of stiff non linear initial value problems. It is proved that under weaker assumptions on the coefficients of a Runge–Kutta method than in the standard theory of B-convergence, it is possible to ensure the convergence of the method for stiff non linear systems belonging to the above mentioned class. Thus, it is shown that some methods which are not algebraically stable, like the Lobatto IIIA or A-stable SIRK methods, are convergent for the class of stiff problems under consideration. Finally, some results on the existence and uniqueness of the Runge–Kutta solution are also presented. Received November 18, 1996 / Revised version received October 6, 1997     

Preserving monotonicity in the numerical solution of Riccati differential equations

Summary. Solutions of symmetric Riccati differential equations (RDEs for short) are in the usual applications positive semidefinite matrices. Moreover, in the class of semidefinite matrices, solutions of different RDEs are also monotone, with respect to properly ordered data. Positivity and monotonicity are essential properties of RDEs. In Dieci and Eirola (1994), we showed that, generally, a direct discretization of the RDE cannot maintain positivity, and be of order greater than one. To get higher order, and to maintain positivity, we are thus forced to look into indirect solution procedures. Here, we consider the problem of how to maintain monotonicity in the numerical solutions of RDEs. Naturally, to obtain order greater than one, we are again forced to look into indirect solution procedures. Still, the restrictions imposed by monotonicity are more stringent that those of positivity, and not all of the successful indirect solution procedures of Dieci and Eirola (1994) maintain monotonicity. We prove that by using symplectic Runge-Kutta (RK) schemes with positive weights (e.g., Gauss schemes) on the underlying Hamiltonian matrix, we eventually maintain monotonicity in the computed solutions of RDEs. Received May 2, 1995     

Order stars and stability for delay differential equations

Summary. We consider Runge–Kutta methods applied to delay differential equations with real a and b. If the numerical solution tends to zero whenever the exact solution does, the method is called -stable. Using the theory of order stars we characterize high-order symmetric methods with this property. In particular, we prove that all Gauss methods are -stable. Furthermore, we present sufficient conditions and we give evidence that also the Radau methods are -stable. We conclude this article with some comments on the case where a andb are complex numbers. Received June 3, 1998 / Published online: July 7, 1999     

Positive definiteness in the numerical solution of Riccati differential equations

Summary. In this work we address the issue of integrating symmetric Riccati and Lyapunov matrix differential equations. In many cases -- typical in applications -- the solutions are positive definite matrices. Our goal is to study when and how this property is maintained for a numerically computed solution. There are two classes of solution methods: direct and indirect algorithms. The first class consists of the schemes resulting from direct discretization of the equations. The second class consists of algorithms which recover the solution by exploiting some special formulae that these solutions are known to satisfy. We show first that using a direct algorithm -- a one-step scheme or a strictly stable multistep scheme (explicit or implicit) -- limits the order of the numerical method to one if we want to guarantee that the computed solution stays positive definite. Then we show two ways to obtain positive definite higher order approximations by using indirect algorithms. The first is to apply a symplectic integrator to an associated Hamiltonian system. The other uses stepwise linearization. Received April 21, 1993     

The NGP-stability of Runge-Kutta methods for systems of neutral delay differential equations

Summary. This paper deals with the stability analysis of implicit Runge-Kutta methods for the numerical solutions of the systems of neutral delay differential equations. We focus on the behavior of such methods with respect to the linear test equations where ,L, M and N are complex matrices. We show that an implicit Runge-Kutta method is NGP-stable if and only if it is A-stable. Received February 10, 1997 / Revised version received January 5, 1998     

On the asymptotic stability properties of Runge-Kutta methods for delay differential equations

Summary. In this paper asymptotic stability properties of Runge-Kutta (R-K) methods for delay differential equations (DDEs) are considered with respect to the following test equation: where and is a continuous real-valued function. In the last few years, stability properties of R-K methods applied to DDEs have been studied by numerous authors who have considered regions of asymptotic stability for “any positive delay” (and thus independent of the specific value of ). In this work we direct attention at the dependence of stability regions on a fixed delay . In particular, natural Runge-Kutta methods for DDEs are extensively examined. Received April 15, 1996 / Revised version received August 8, 1996     

Instability of Runge-Kutta methods when applied to linear systems of delay differential equations

Summary. This paper investigates the stability of Runge-Kutta methods when they are applied to the complex linear system of delay differential equations , where . We prove that no Runge-Kutta method preserves asymptotic stability. Received January 24, 2000 / Revised version received July 19, 2000 / Published online June 7, 2001     

Stability of piecewise polynomial collocation for computing periodic solutions of delay differential equations

Summary. We prove numerical stability of a class of piecewise polynomial collocation methods on nonuniform meshes for computing asymptotically stable and unstable periodic solutions of the linear delay differential equation by a (periodic) boundary value approach. This equation arises, e.g., in the study of the numerical stability of collocation methods for computing periodic solutions of nonlinear delay equations. We obtain convergence results for the standard collocation algorithm and for two variants. In particular, estimates of the difference between the collocation solution and the true solution are derived. For the standard collocation scheme the convergence results are “unconditional”, that is, they do not require mesh-ratio restrictions. Numerical results that support the theoretical findings are also given. Received June 9, 2000 / Revised version received December 14, 2000 / Published online October 17, 2001     

Asymptotic stability analysis of Runge-Kutta methods for nonlinear systems of delay differential equations

Summary. We consider systems of delay differential equations (DDEs) of the form with the initial condition . Recently, Torelli [10] introduced a concept of stability for numerical methods applied to dissipative nonlinear systems of DDEs (in some inner product norm), namely RN-stability, which is the straighforward generalization of the wellknown concept of BN-stability of numerical methods with respect to dissipative systems of ODEs. Dissipativity means that the solutions and corresponding to different initial functions and , respectively, satisfy the inequality , and is guaranteed by suitable conditions on the Lipschitz constants of the right-hand side function . A numerical method is said to be RN-stable if it preserves this contractivity property. After showing that, under slightly more stringent hypotheses on the Lipschitz constants and on the delay function , the solutions and are such that , in this paper we prove that RN-stable continuous Runge-Kutta methods preserve also this asymptotic stability property. Received March 29, 1996 / Revised version received August 12, 1996     

A Gautschi-type method for oscillatory second-order differential equations

Summary. We study a numerical method for second-order differential equations in which high-frequency oscillations are generated by a linear part. For example, semilinear wave equations are of this type. The numerical scheme is based on the requirement that it solves linear problems with constant inhomogeneity exactly. We prove that the method admits second-order error bounds which are independent of the product of the step size with the frequencies. Our analysis also provides new insight into the m ollified impulse method of García-Archilla, Sanz-Serna, and Skeel. We include results of numerical experiments with the sine-Gordon equation. Received January 21, 1998 / Published online: June 29, 1999     

Absorbing boundary conditions for diffusion equations

Summary. We construct and analyse a family of absorbing boundary conditions for diffusion equations with variable coefficients, curved artifical boundary, and arbitrary convection. It relies on the geometric identification of the Dirichlet to Neumann map and rational interpolation of in the complex plane. The boundary conditions are stable, accurate, and practical for computations. Received December 12, 1992 / Revised version received July 4, 1994     

LCNO Sturm-Liouville problems: computational difficulties and examples

Summary. In this paper we give a new proof of a theorem of Bailey, Everitt and Zettl on the convergence of truncated approximations to limit circle (LC) Sturm-Liouville problems, both non-oscillatory (LCNO) and oscillatory (LCO). The proof gives an error bound not previously available. We prove a theorem on the conditioning of LCNO problems with respect to non-Friedrichs boundary conditions. We present numerical experiments which illustrate how the theorem successfully predicts the conditioning of LCNO problems. Our work may also explain the performance of the code SLEIGN2 recently reported by Bailey et al. [1] on a number of problems. Received January 22, 1993 / Revised version received April 22, 1994     

Fast verification of solutions of matrix equations

Summary. In this paper, we are concerned with a matrix equation where A is an real matrix and x and b are n-vectors. Assume that an approximate solution is given together with an approximate LU decomposition. We will present fast algorithms for proving nonsingularity of A and for calculating rigorous error bounds for . The emphasis is on rigour of the bounds. The purpose of this paper is to propose different algorithms, the fastest with flops computational cost for the verification step, the same as for the LU decomposition. The presented algorithms exclusively use library routines for LU decomposition and for all other matrix and vector operations. Received June 16, 1999 / Revised version received January 25, 2001 / Published online June 20, 2001     

Orthosymplectic integration of linear Hamiltonian systems

Summary. The authors describe a continuous, orthogonal and symplectic factorization procedure for integrating unstable linear Hamiltonian systems. The method relies on the development of an orthogonal, symplectic change of variables to block triangular Hamiltonian form. Integration is thus carried out within the class of linear Hamiltonian systems. Use of an appropriate timestepping strategy ensures that the symplectic pairing of eigenvalues is automatically preserved. For long-term integrations, as are needed in the calculation of Lyapunov exponents, the favorable qualitative properties of such a symplectic framework can be expected to yield improved estimates. The method is illustrated and compared with other techniques in numerical experiments on the Hénon-Heiles and spatially discretized Sine-Gordon equations. Received December 11, 1995 / Revised version received April 18, 1996     

Computation of orthonormal factors for fundamental solution matrices

Summary. In this work, we introduce and analyze two new techniques for obtaining the Q factor in the QR factorization of some (or all) columns of a fundamental solution matrix Y of a linear differential system. These techniques are based on elementary Householder and Givens transformations. We implement and compare these new techniques with existing approaches on some examples. Received October 27, 1997 / Revised version received September 21, 1998 / Published online August 19, 1999