A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of positive solutions of singular boundary value problems (Q812764)

The authors study the following fourth-order singular boundary problem \[ u^{(4)}(t)=f(t,u(t)),\quad t\in (0,1),\quad u(0)=u(1)=0,\quad u''(0)=u''(1)=0.\tag{1} \] Using the monotone-iterative technique, they establish a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of positive solutions to the singular BVP (1). Namely, they prove that if \[ f\in C((0,1)\times[0,\infty),[0,\infty)) \] is increasing in \(u\) and \[ f(t,ru)\leq r(1+m(r^{-\alpha}-1))f(t,u) \] for all \((t,u)\in (0,1)\times [0,\infty)\) and \(r\in (0,1)\), \(m\in (0,1]\) and \(\alpha \in (0,1)\), then the BVP (1) has a positive solution in \(C^3[0,1]\) if and only if \[ 0<\int_0^1 f(s,s(1-s))ds < \infty. \]