Dynamical analysis of the transmission of seasonal diseases using the differential transformation method

The aim of this paper is to apply the differential transformation method. (DTM) to solve systems of nonautonomous nonlinear differential equations that describe several epidemic models where the solutions exhibit periodic behavior due to the seasonal transmission rate. These models describe the dynamics of the different classes of the populations. Here the concept of DTM is introduced and then it is employed to derive a set of difference equations for this kind of epidemic models. The DTM is used here as an algorithm for approximating the solutions of the epidemic models in a sequence of time intervals. In order to show the efficiency of the method, the obtained numerical results are compared with the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method solutions. Numerical comparisons show that the DTM is accurate, easy to apply and the calculated solutions preserve the properties of the continuous models, such as the periodic behavior. Furthermore, it is showed that the DTM avoids large computational work and symbolic computation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.