On a nonsmooth fourth order boundary value problem (Q2381466)

The boundary value problem \[ u^{iv}-au''+bu\in \overline{\partial }F(t,u), \] \[ (-u'''(0) +au'(0) ,\;u'''(1) -au'(1) ,\;u''(0) ,\;-u''(1)) ^{T}\in \partial j(u(0) ,\;u(1) ,\;u'(0) ,\;u'(1))^{T} \] is considered. Here, \(F:(0,1) \times\mathbb R\to \mathbb R\) is a Carathéodory mapping, locally Lipschitz with respect to the second variable with \(\overline{\partial }\) denoting the Clarke generalized gradient, \( F(t,0) =0\) a.e.; \(j:\mathbb R^{4}\to (-\infty ,+\infty ] \) is a proper l.s.c. function with subdifferential \(\partial j\) such that \([ 0,0,0,0] ^{T}\in D(j) \). Conditions \(F( t,0) =0\) a.e. and \([ 0,0,0,0] ^{T}\in D(j) \) do not restrict the generality of considerations. The problem considered provides a generalized framework for investigating various types of boundary value problems which include many classical boundary conditions. The idea of this research originated from the models of deflection of elastic beam and radial deflection for symmetrical buckling of a cylindrical shell under uniform axial compression. Depending on suitable further growth conditions on the nonlinear term the direct method of the calculus of variations is applied in order to demonstrate that the given problem has at least one solution. However it may seem easy, the argument used in the proof is nontrivial due to the complexity of the problem. Next, in the superlinear case, assuming classical growth on \(F\) (including asymptotically quadratic growth) and some conditions on \(j\) the existence of nonzero solution is shown. With these conditions the action functional satisfies a Palais-Smale condition. A mountain pass theorem is used in the proof. As an example it is shown that the problem \(u^{iv}=F'(x)\) subject to Dirichlet boundary conditions and with \(F=\frac{c}{2} x^{2}e^{-\frac{1}{| x|}}\) for some \(c>0\) has only the zero solution and that it has at least one nonzero solution in the superlinear case.