ABSTRACT
Our approach to understanding the capabilities as well as the limitations of a physical model often hinges on computing solutions to ordinary differential equations (ODEs). In this chapter we will review some of the fundamental concepts associated with ODEs and introduce a few basic approximate techniques for obtaining these solutions when exact solutions are not available in analytic form. An added goal in this section is to provide enough background to motivate the use of MATLAB’s powerful suite of ODE solvers, including ode45. Some of the techniques discussed here are then extended to solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs).
