Collocation methods for second-order volterra integro-differential equations

We study the numerical solution of second-order Volterra integro-differential equations by means of collocation techniques in certain polynomial spline spaces. Suitable discretization of the resulting collocation equation yields implicit methods which may be viewed as extensions of m-stage implicit Runge-Kutta-Nyström methods for initial-value problems of second-order ordinary differential equations to second-order integro-differential equations. The attainable order of (local) convergence of these methods is analyzed in detail.