ABSTRACT
Many differential equations are generated because of engineering problems analysis, and most of them cannot be easily solved. In this chapter, differential equations are solved numerically using Matlab (and Excel in a few cases). There is a close relationship between solving initial value problems and a finite integral using an approximation method; this inspires the development of the techniques outlined in this chapter. Several differential equations cannot be solved using symbolic computation. However, a numeric approximation to the solution is often sufficient for practical purposes. The problems that contain first-order ordinary differential equations are solved by employing methods of Euler, modified Euler, midpoint, Heun, and Runge-Kutta second, third, and fourth order.
