Derivation and Implementation of a Fifth Stage Fourth Order Explicit Runge-Kutta Formula using f(x,y) Functional Derivatives

Abstract

This paper is aimed at using f(x,y) functional derivatives to derive a fifth stage fourth order Explicit Runge-Kutta formula for solving initial value problems in Ordinary Differential Equations. The  f(x,y) functional derivatives from the general Runge-Kutta scheme will be compared with the f(x,y) functional derivatives from the Taylor series expansion to derive the method. The method will be implemented on some initial value problems, and results compared with results from the classical fourth order method. The results revealed that the method compared favorably well with the existing classical fourth order method.