Digital simulation of continuous dynamic systems: an overview

Abstract

There has been a growing interest over the last decade, both in this country and abroad, in the use of the digital computer to model continuous dynamic systems. Prior to 1960, and still true in large measure today this application area had been the exclusive province of the analog computer. The initial motivation for integrating the ordinary differential equations characteristic of continuous system simulation models on the digital computer was one of accuracy; given enough time, solutions of essentially unlimited accuracy could be obtained from the digital computer. These accurate, but costly, solutions were then used as consistency checks on the many hundreds of solutions characteristic of a simulation study on a high speed electronic analog computer.