Integrator in Computer Simulation
In some computational physics computer simulations, such as numerical weather prediction, molecular dynamics, flight simulators, reservoir simulation, noise barrier design, architectural acoustics, and electronic circuit simulation, an integrator is a numerical method for integrating trajectories from forces (and thereby accelerations) that are only calculated at discrete time steps.
There are a variety of explicit and implicit methods used in computer simulations. The most basic and least accurate kind of numerical integration is Euler integration. Verlet integration improves the accuracy of the integration to within fourth-order Taylor series terms, and the Runge–Kutta method which is gaining popularity further improves this accuracy to within fifth-order Taylor series terms.
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