Ordinary Differential Equations: MATLAB/Simulink ® Solutions.
Aliyu Bhar Kisabo, Aliyu Adebimpe Funmilayo · 2012
Ordinary differential equations (ODEs) are used throughout engineering, mathematics, and science to describe how physical quantities change. Hence, effective simulation (or prediction) of such systems is imperative. This paper explores the ability of MATLAB/Simulink ® to achieve this feat with relative ease-either by writing MATLAB code commands or via Simulink for linear Initial Value Problems (IVPs). Also, solutions to selected examples considered in this paper were approached from the standpoint of a numerical and exact solution for the purpose of comparison. Since no single numerical method of solving a model suffices for all systems, choice of a solver is of utmost important. Thus, experimenting between fixed-step and variable-step solver was also explored. For the selected examples, variable-step solvers out-performed the fixed-step counterpart.