Copyright © 2012 S. Hristova et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

The object of investigation of the paper is a special type of difference equations containing the maximum value of the unknown function over a past time interval. These equations are adequate models of real processes which present state depends significantly on their maximal value over a past time interval. An algorithm based on the quasilinearization method is suggested to solve approximately the initial value problem for the given difference equation. Every successive approximation of the unknown solution is the unique solution of an appropriately constructed initial value problem for a linear difference equation with “maxima,” and a formula for its explicit form is given. Also, each approximation is a lower/upper solution of the given mixed problem. It is proved the quadratic convergence of the successive approximations. The suggested algorithm is realized as a computer program, and it is applied to an example, illustrating the advantages of the suggested scheme.