Comparison of the Solution of the Van der Pol Equation Using the Modified Adomian Decomposition Method and Truncated Taylor Series Method

Abstract

In this paper, we compare the solution of the van der Pol equation obtained by using the truncated Taylor series method and the modified Adomian decomposition method with the solution obtained by the Poincare-Lindstedt (P-L) method. The approximating 4-component modified Adomian decomposition method behaves more like an approximate P-L analytic method than the tenth-order Taylor series. Also, with the addition of just one term, the approximating 5-component modified Adomian decomposition method produces a more convergent solution to that of P-L analytic method than the twenty second-order Taylor series approximation as the independent variable t representing time progressively increases. A general comparison of the two solutions revealed that the absolute errors generated by the approximating polynomial from the Taylor series are greater than the ones generated from the modified Adomian decomposition method. It was further revealed that very few components of the modified Adomian decomposition could yield a series of about 3 times the order of the one obtained by using the Taylor series method. Hence, we recommend the inclusion of the modified Adomian Decomposition Method in modern mathematical tools.