Boundedness Results for Solutions of Certain Nonlinear Differential Equations of Second Order

In this paper, we establish some new sufficient conditions which guaranteethe boundedness and the uniform boundedness of solutions of certain nonlinearand nonautonomous differential equations of second order. By defining appropriateLiapunov functions, we obtain some new results on the subject, and examples arealso provided to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed results. By this work, weextend and improve some boundedness results in the literature.DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.22342/jims.16.2.35.115-126


Introduction
In applied science some practical problems concerning physics, mechanics and the engineering technique fields associated with nonlinear differential equations of second order can be found in Ahmad and Rama Mohana Rao [1], Burton [2], Hale [8] and Yoshizawa [23]. Hence, nonlinear differential equations of second order have 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 34D20 Received: 09-09-2010, accepted: 24-11-2010. been the object of intensive analysis by numerous authors. In particular, there have been extensive results on the boundedness of solutions of various nonlinear differential equations of second order in the literature. For example, for a comprehensive treatment of the subject on the boundedness of solutions, we refer the readers to books of Ahmad and Rama Mohana Rao [1], Krasovskii [11], Yoshizawa [22] and the papers of Graef [3,4], Graef and Spikes [5,6,7], Huang et al. [9], Jin [10], Murakami [12], Saker [13], Sun [14], Tunç [15,16,17], Tunç and Şevli [18], Tunç and Tunç [19], Villari [20], Ye et al. [21], Zhao [24], Waltman [25], Wong [26], Wong and Burton [27] and the references contained in these sources. Thus, it is worthwhile to continue to the investigation of the boundedness of solutions of nonlinear differential equations of second order in this case.
In 1963, Waltman [25] considered second order non-autonomous differential equation The author establishes some sufficient conditions under which all solutions of Eq.
(1) are bounded on a semi-infinite interval, and a condition under which the solutions are oscillatory. His theorems generalize classical results regarding linear systems. Later on, in 1964, based on the results of Waltman [25], Wong [26] investigated second order nonlinear differential equation where a, f and g are continuous functions on ℜ + = [0, ∞) and ℜ = (−∞, ∞), respectively. Wong [26] first proved the following theorem by using the integration test.
Theorem B (Wong [26,Theorem 2]). If Eq. (2) is of the following from: with b(t) → 0 as t → ∞, and f (x) satisfies condition (ii) in Theorem A, then all solutions of Eq. (3) are bounded for all t ≥ 0.
By the foregoing theorems, Wong [26] generalized a theorem of Waltman [25] on the boundedness of solutions of Eq. (1).
In this paper, instead of Eqs. (2) and (3), we consider the non-linear differential equations of second order as follows and respectively, where b, c, f, g, h and e are continuous functions in their respective domains, a 2 is a constant, and it is assumed that the derivatives b ′ (t) and c ′ (t) exist and are continuous. A primary purpose of this paper is to study the boundedness and the uniform boundedness of solutions of Eqs. (4) and (5). We will establish some new sufficient conditions for all solutions of Eqs. (4) and (5) to be bounded and uniform bounded. To the best of our knowledge, so far, the boundedness and the uniform boundedness of solutions of nonlinear differential equations of the form (1) and (2) have not been investigated in the literature. To prove our main results, we define four Liapunov functions. As seen, Eq. (4) is included by Eq. (5). However, the assumptions and the Liapunov functions established here for that equations, Eqs. (4) and (5), are different. This paper is especially motivated by the papers of Waltman [25], Wong [26] and that mentioned above. It is worth mentioning that the equations discussed by Waltman [25] and Wong [26], Eqs. (1), (2) and (3) are special cases of Eqs. (4) and (5). Next, Wong [26] discussed the boundedness of solutions of the mentioned equations without giving any example on the topic. In addition to the boundedness of solutions, we investigate also the uniform boundedness of the solutions and introduce four examples to show the effectiveness of our results. If applying our results to Eqs. (4) and (5), one will find that our results are different from those in the references of this paper and complement for them.
We write Eqs. (4) and (5) in system form as follows and respectively. Before introducing our main results, we remind a basic result on uniform boundedness of the solutions of a general non-autonomous system.
Consider a system of differential equations where ℜ + denotes the interval [0, ∞) and D is a connected open set in ℜ n . It is also assumed without loss of generality that F (t, 0) = 0 and D is a domain such that x < H, H > 0.
Theorem 1. (Yoshizawa [22].) Suppose that there exists a Liapunov function where R may be large, which satisfies the following conditions: , where a(r) ∈ CI, a(r) → ∞ as r → ∞ and b(r) ∈ CI (CI denotes the families of continuous increasing functions), Then, the solutions of (8) are uniform-bounded.

Description of Problems
The first main problem of this paper is the following theorem.
Theorem 2. In addition to the basic assumptions imposed on the functions b, f, g, h and e that appear in Eq. (4), we assume that there exists a positive constant α such that the following assumptions hold: Then all solutions of Eq. (4) are bounded.
Subject to the assumptions of Theorem 2, the time derivative of the Liapunov function V (t, x, y) along a solution (x(t), y(t)) of (6) yields that Integrating the last inequality from 0 to t, using the assumption In view of the above discussion, that is, one can conclude that there exists a positive constant K 1 such that The proof of Theorem 2 is now completed.
The second main problem of this paper is the following theorem.
Theorem 3. In addition to the all assumptions of Theorem 2, except xh(x) ≥ αx 2 and b(t) ≥ 1, we assume that Proof. Define the Liapunov function Hence, we arrive at condition (i) of Theorem 1, which holds by the assumption x 0 h(s)ds → +∞ as |x| → ∞.
By a direct calculation and the assumptions of Theorem 3, the time derivative of the Liapunov function V 1 (t, x, y) along the system (6) gives that Thus, we conclude that the solutions of Eq. (4) are uniform-bounded.
Taking into account the above discussion and that in Example 1, it follows that all the assumptions of Theorem 3 hold. Thus, we arrive at all solutions of the above equation are uniform bounded.
The third main problem of this paper is the following theorem.
Theorem 4. In addition to the basic assumptions imposed on the functions b, c, f, g, h and e that appear in Eq. (5), we assume that there exist positive constants c 0 and α such that the following assumptions hold: (i) a 2 + b(t) ≥ 0 for all t ∈ ℜ + , f (t, x, y)g(t, x, y)y ≥ 0 for all t ∈ ℜ + and x, y ∈ ℜ, Then all solutions of Eq. (5) are bounded.
Proof. Define the Liapunov function so that V 2 (t, 0, 0) = 0, and x ≥ α > 0. Subject to the assumptions of Theorem 4, the time derivative of the Liapunov function V 2 (t, x, y) along a solution (x(t), y(t)) of (7) yields that Proceeding as in Theorem 2, one can complete the rest of the proof. Therefore, we omit the details.
Example 3. Let us consider the second order non-autonomous and nonlinear differential equation Hence, we have the following estimations: By noting the above discussion and that in Example 1, it follows that all the assumptions of Theorem 4 hold. Thus, all solutions of the above equation are bounded.
The last main problem of this paper is the following theorem. Hence, we arrive at condition (i) of Theorem 1, which holds by the assumption x 0 h(s)ds → +∞ as |x| → ∞.
By a direct calculation and the assumptions of Theorem 5, the time derivative of the Liapunov function V 3 (t, x, y) along a solution (x(t), y(t)) of system (7) gives x, y)y} Hence, we conclude that the solutions of Eq. (5) are uniform-bounded.
Example 4. Consider the second order non-autonomous and nonlinear differential equation: In view of the discussion in Example 3 and the above equation, it follows that all the assumptions of Theorem 5 holds. Hence, we conclude that all solutions of the above equation are uniform bounded. Remark 1. In the proof of Theorem 2 and Theorem 4 we did not use Theorem 1 of Yoshizawa [22], but we used it in the proof of Theorem 3 and Theorem 5. Remark 2. Theorems 2-5 raise some new results on the boundedness and the uniform boundedness of solutions of second order non-autonomous and nonlinear differential equations. This case is an improvement on the subject. Remark 3. The assumptions of our main theorems are elegant and understandable, and they can also be easily applied to general second order non-autonomous and nonlinear differential equations. That is to say the following: Our equations, Eq. (4) and Eq. (5), include and improve that discussed by Waltman [25] and Wong [26]. Our findings can be viewed as complementary results for the boundedness results obtained by Waltman [25], Wong [26] and that in the references of this paper. Next, the applicability of our assumptions can be easily confirmed. Remark 4. Theorems 3 and 5 give some additional new results to that of by Waltman [25,Theorem 1] and Wong [26]. The procedures used in proofs of our main problems are clear and comprehensible.