PurposeExtrapolation is a process used to accelerate the convergence of a sequence of approximations to the true value. Different stepsizes are used to obtain approximate solutions, which are combined to increase the order of the approximation by eliminating leading error terms. The smoothing technique is also applied to suppress order reduction and to dampen the oscillatory component in the numerical solution when solving stiff problems. The extrapolation and smoothing technique can be applied in either active, passive or the combination of both active and passive modes. In this paper, the authors investigate the best strategy of implementing extrapolation and smoothing technique and use this strategy to solve stiff ordinary differential equations. Based on the experiment, the authors suggest using passive smoothing in order to reduce the computation time.Design/methodology/approachThe two-step smoothing is a composition of four steps of the symmetric method with different weights. It is used as the final two steps when combined with many steps of the symmetric method. The aim is to preserve symmetry and provide damping for stiff problem and to be more robust than the one-step smoothing. The two-step smoothing is L-stable. The new method is then applied with extrapolation process in passive and active modes to investigate the most efficient and accurate method of implementation.FindingsIn this paper, the authors constructed the two-step smoothing to be more robust than the one-step smoothing. The two-step smoothing is constructed to achieve as high order as possible and able to restore the classical order of particular method compared to the one-step active smoothing that is only able to achieve order-1 condition. The two-step smoothing for ITR is also superior in solving stiff case since it has the super-convergent order-4 behavior. In our experiments with extrapolation, it is proven that the two-step smoothing is more accurate and more efficient than the one-step smoothing, namely 1ASAX. It is also observed that the method with smoothing is comparable if not superior to the existing base method in certain cases. Based on the experiment, the authors would suggest using passive smoothing if the aim is to reduce computation time. It is of interest to conduct more experiment to validate the accuracy and efficiency of the smoothing formula with and without extrapolation.Originality/valueThe implementation of extrapolation on two-step symmetric Runge–Kutta method has not been tested on variety of other test problems yet. The two-step symmetrization is an extension of the one-step symmetrization and has not been constructed by other researchers yet. The method is constructed such that it preserves the asymptotic error expansion in even powers of stepsize, and when used with extrapolation the order might increase by 2 at a time. The method is also L-stable and eliminates the order reduction phenomenon when solving stiff ODEs. It is also of interest to observe other ways of implementing extrapolation using other sequences or with interpolation.
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