A Comparative Study of Digital Integration Methods

Abstract

This paper is a brief report on an investigation into the performance of integration routines used in the simula tion of dynamic systems by general-purpose digital simu lation programs. The performance is compared with respect to overall speed, accuracy, and convenience. Several routines are considered, including rectangular, Runge-Kutta, Runge-Kutta-Blum, Runge-Kutta-Mer son, and Adams-Moulton methods. The last two may use either fixed- or variable-step-size methods. The Tus tin method and the State-Transition method are also included. By examining the performance of the routines through tests on representative systems, it is shown that for the simulation of linear systems the state transition method works best. For the general simulation of linear and non linear systems the variable-step-size Runge-Kutta-Mer son method proves to be most accurate and most efficient. The variable-step-size method may be designed to gen erate outputs at uniform intervals, thus greatly enhanc ing its value when synchronous interaction with other parts of a simulation is required.