Nonexistence and existence of positive solutions for second order singular three-point boundary value problems with derivative dependent and sign-changing nonlinearities (Q545568)

The authors are concerned with the second-order nonlinear differential equation \[ x''(t)=-f(t,x'(t),x'(t)), \] posed on the interval \([0,1]\) and subject to three-point boundary conditions \[ x(0) = 0, q x(1) = \alpha x(\eta),\quad 0<\eta<1,\quad 0<\alpha <1. \] The authors first prove a nonexistence result when \(f\) is upper bounded by some nonpositive function. Using the Leray-Schauder fixed point theorem, then the authors prove the existence of at least one positive solution for the case that the nonlinearity may change sign and has singularities at \(t=0\) and \(x=0\) and even at the first derivative \(x'=0\). The arguments of the proofs rely on approximating the fixed-point operator together with several estimates. The paper ends with an example.