Recent advances in the numerical analysis of Volterra functional differential equations with variable delays

The numerical analysis of Volterra functional integro-differential equations with vanishing delays has to overcome a number of challenges that are not encountered when solving ‘classical’ delay differential equations with non-vanishing delays. In this paper I shall describe recent results in the analysis of optimal (global and local) superconvergence orders in collocation methods for such evolutionary problems. Following a brief survey of results for equations containing Volterra integral operators with non-vanishing delays, the discussion will focus on pantograph-type Volterra integro-differential equations with (linear and nonlinear) vanishing delays. The paper concludes with a section on open problems; these include the asymptotic stability of collocation solutions u h on uniform meshes for pantograph-type functional equations, and the analysis of collocation methods for pantograph-type functional equations with advanced arguments.