Piecewise Polynomial Collocation for Volterra-type Integral Equations of the Second Kind

The exact solution of a given integral equation of the secondkind of Volterra type(with regular or weakly singular kernel)is projected into the space of (continuous) piecewise polynomialsof degree m 1 and with prescribed knots by using collocationtechniques. It is shown that a number of discrete methods forthe numerical solution of such equations based on product integrationtechniques or on finite-difference methods are particular discreteversions of collocation methods of the above type. The errorbehaviour of approximate solutions obtained by collocation (includingtheir discretizations) is discussed.