Approximation of solutions for an initial and terminal value problem for the forced Duffing equation with non-viscous damping (Q979307)

This paper is concerned with the approximate solution of some special boundary value problems for second order functional equations of the type \[ L[u](t) \equiv u''(t) + a_0 u'(t) + f(t, u(t)) + \int_0^t K(t,s, u'(s) )\, ds =0, \quad t \in [0,T], \tag{1} \] together with the boundary conditions \( u(0)=a, u'(T)=0\). These problems, for the special functions \( f(t,u)= a_1 w^2 u + a_2 u^3 - a_3 \cos ( w t + a_4)\) with \( a_1, a_2, a_3, a_4, w \) constants, are here referred to as initial and terminal value problems for the forced Duffing equation with non viscous damping. The main result is that assuming the existence of a lower solution \( u= \alpha (t)\) and an upper solution \( u = \beta (t)\) of (1) that satisfy \( L[\alpha](t) \leq 0\), \(\alpha (0) \leq a\), \(\alpha'(T) \leq 0\) and \( L[\beta](t) \geq 0\), \(\beta (0) \geq a\), \(\beta'(T) \geq 0\) together with some conditions on the functions \( f(t,u)\) and \( K(t,s,u')\), it can be proved the existence of a monotonic sequence \( \{ w_n (t) \}_{n \geq 0}\), \( t \in [0,T]\) with \( \alpha = w_0 \leq w_1 \leq w_2\leq \dots \leq \beta\) that converges uniformly in \([0,T]\) to a solution of (1) that turns out to be unique. This proof based on a quasilinearization technique and provides a constructive algorithm to approach the unique solution. Finally, an example is presented to show the explicit calculation of some iterates with the proposed approach.