A modification of the Stiefel-Bettis method for nonlinearly damped oscillators (Q1104057)

This paper presents a modification of the method of \textit{E. Stiefel} and \textit{D. G. Bettis} [Numer. Math. 13, 154-175 (1969; Zbl 0219.65062)] for the numerical solution of initial value problems for second order differential equations of the type: \(y''+w^ 2y=f(t,y,y')\), where w is constant and the perturbed term f(t,y,y') is much smaller than \(w^ 2y\). In order to derive such a formula, the differential equation is replaced by an equivalent integro-difference equation and then the integral is approximated by a three point integration formula. Thus the author obtains an implicit method which integrates exactly the functions 1, t, \(t^ 2\), \(t^ 3\), sin wt, cos wt and has a truncation error of \(O(h^ 6)\). Furthermore if f is independent of y', the author proposes an explicit predictor which together with the modified Stiefel-Bettis method has trigonometric order one and truncation error of \(O(h^ 6)\). Finally some numerical experiments are presented.