Cubic Splines and Approximate Solution of Singular Integral Equations

Of concern here is the numerical solution of singular integral equations of Cauchy type; i.e., equations involving principal value integrals. The unknown function is expressed as the product of an appropriate weight function and a cubic spline. The problem is reduced to a system of linear algebraic equations which is solved for the approximate values of the function at the knots. An estimate is provided for the maximum error of the approximate solution. Numerical results from the spline method are compared with those obtained using other methods.