On the error control in ODE solvers with local extrapolation

Jackson, Enright, and Hull have analytically assessed the effectiveness of RK-algorithms for linear ODEs with constant coefficients. Their results may carry over to more general problems if a certain relation between the local error estimate and the true local error of the algorithm continues to hold. Numerical investigation of this relation for a code which performs local extrapolation gives some insight in the performance of the error control mechanism of such codes.